[15]

before which stretches
an uncobbled tramsiding set with skeleton tracks, red and green
will-o'-the-wisps and danger signals. Rows of grimy houses with
gaping doors. Rare lamps with faint rainbow fins. Round
Rabaiotti's halted ice gondola stunted men and women squabble.
They grab wafers between which are wedged lumps of coral and
copper snow. Sucking, they scatter slowly, children. The swancomb
of the gondola, highreared, forges on through the murk, white and
blue under a lighthouse. Whistles call and answer.)

(They release him. He jerks on. A pigmy woman swings on a rope
slung between two railings, counting. A form sprawled against a
dustbin and muffled by its arm and hat snores, groans, grinding

growling teeth, and snores again. On a step a gnome totting among
a rubbishtip crouches to shoulder a sack of rags and bones. A crone
standing by with a smoky oillamp rams her last bottle in the maw of

30

his sack. He heaves his booty, tugs askew his peaked cap and
hobbles off mutely. The crone makes back for her lair, swaying her
lamp. A bandy child, asquat on the doorstep with a paper
shuttlecock, crawls sidling after her in spurts, clutches her skirt,
scrambles up. A drunken navvy grips with both hands the railings
of an area, lurching heavily. At a comer two night watch in
shouldercapes, their hands upon their staffholsters, loom tall. A
plate crashes: a woman screams: a child wails. Oaths of a man
roar, mutter, cease. Figures wander, lurk, peer from warrens. In a
room lit by a candle stuck in a bottleneck a slut combs out the tatts

40

from the hair of a scrofulous child. Cissy Caffrey's voice, still
young, sings shrill from a lane.)

CISSY CAFFREY

I gave it to Molly
Because she was jolly,
The leg of the duck,
The leg of the duck.

(Private Carr and Private Compton, swaggersticks tight in their
oxters, as they march unsteadily rightaboutface and burst together
from their mouths a volleyed fart. Laughter of men from the lane. A so

(spits in their trail her jet of venom) Trinity medicals. Fallopian
tube. All
prick and no pence.

(Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with Bertha Supple, draws her
shawl across her nostrils.)

EDY BOARDMAN

90

(bickering) And says the one: I seen you up Faithful place with
your
squarepusher, the greaser off the railway, in his cometobed hat. Did you,
says I. That's not for you to say, says I. You never seen me in the mantrap
with a married highlander, says I. The likes of her! Stag that one is!
Stubborn as a mule! And her walking with two fellows the one time,
Kilbride, the enginedriver, and lancecorporal Oliphant.

(Stephen thrusts the ashplant on him and slowly holds out his
hands, his head going back till both hands are a span from his
breast, down turned, in planes intersecting, the fingers about to
part, the left being higher.)

LYNCH

Which is the jug of bread? It skills not. That or the customhouse. Illustrate
thou. Here take your crutch and walk.

130

(They pass. Tommy Caffrey scrambles to a gaslamp and, clasping,
climbs in spasms. From the top spur he slides down. Jacky Caffrey
clasps to climb. The navvy lurches against the lamp. The twins
scuttle off in the dark. The navvy, swaying, presses a forefinger
against a wing of his nose and ejects from the farther nostril a long
liquid jet of snot. Shouldering the lamp he staggers away through
the crowd with his flaring cresset.
Snakes of river fog creep slowly. From drains, clefts, cesspools,
middens arise on all sides stagnant fumes. A glow leaps in the south
beyond the seaward reaches of the river. The navvy, staggering

140

forward, cleaves the crowd and lurches towards the tramsiding On
the farther side under the railway bridge Bloom appears, flushed,
panting, cramming bread and chocolate into a sidepocket. From
Gillen's hairdresser's window a composite portrait shows him
gallant Nelson 's image. A concave mirror at the side presents to him
lovelorn longlost lugubru Booloohoom. Grave Gladstone sees him
level, Bloom for Bloom. He passes, struck by the stare of truculent
Wellington, but in the convex mirror grin unstruck the bonham eyes
and fatchuck cheekchops of jollypoldy the rixdix doldy.At Antonio Rabaiotti's door Bloom halts, sweated under the bright

(He disappears into Olhausen's, the porkbutcher's, under the
downcoming rollshutter. A few moments later he emerges from
under the shutter, puffing Poldy, blowing Bloohoom. In each hand
he holds a parcel, one containing a lukewarm pig's crubeen, the
other a cold sheep's trotter, sprinkled with wholepepper. He gasps,
standing upright. Then bending to one side he presses a parcel

(He looks round, darts forward suddenly. Through rising fog a
dragon sandstrewer, travelling at caution, slews heavily down upon
him, its huge red headlight winking, its trolley hissing on the wire.
The motorman bangs his footgong.)

THE GONG

Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo.

190

(The brake cracks violently. Bloom, raising a policeman's
whitegloved hand, blunders stifflegged out of the track. The
motorman, thrown forward, pugnosed, on the guidewheel, yells as
he slides past over chains and keys.)

(Bloom trickleaps to the curbstone and halts again. He brushes a
mudflake from his cheek with a parcelled hand.)

BLOOM

No thoroughfare. Close shave that but cured the stitch. Must take up

200

Sandow's exercises again. On the hands down. Insure against street
accident too. The Providential. (he feels his trouser pocket) Poor
mamma's panacea. Heel easily catch in track or bootlace in a cog. Day the
wheel of the black Maria peeled off my shoe at Leonard's corner. Third
time is the charm. Shoe trick. Insolent driver. I ought to report him.
Tension makes them nervous. Might be the fellow balked me this morning
with that horsey woman. Same style of beauty. Quick of him all the same.
The stiff walk. True word spoken in jest. That awful cramp in Lad lane.
Something poisonous I ate. Emblem of luck. Why? Probably lost cattle.
Mark of the beast. (he closes his eyes an instant) Bit light in
the head.

210

Monthly or effect of the other. Brainfogfag. That tired feeling. Too much
for me now. Ow!

(A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against O'Beirne's wall,
a
visage unknown, injected with dark mercury. From under a
wideleaved sombrero the figure regards him with evil eye.)

Keep to the right, right, right. If there is a signpost planted by the
Touring
Club at Stepaside who procured that public boon? I who lost my way and
contributed to the columns of the Irish Cyclist the letter headed
In darkest
Stepaside. Keep, keep, keep to the right. Rags and bones at midnight.
A
fence more likely. First place murderer makes for. Wash off his sins of
the
world.

What you making down this place? Have you no soul? (with feeble vulture

260

talons he feels the silent face of Bloom) Are you not my son Leopold,
the
grandson of Leopold? Are you not my dear son Leopold who left the house
of his father and left the god of his fathers Abraham and Jacob?

BLOOM

(with precaution) I suppose so, father. Mosenthal. All that's
left of him.

RUDOLPH

(severely) One night they bring you home drunk as dog after spend
your
good money. What you call them running chaps?

(in pantomime dame's stringed mobcap, widow Twankey's crinoline and
bustle, blouse with muttonleg sleeves buttoned behind, grey mittens and
cameo brooch, her plaited hair in a crispine net, appears over the staircase
banisters, a slanted candlestick in her hand, and cries out in shrill alarm)
O blessed Redeemer, what have they done to him! My smelling salts!
(She
hauls up a reef of skirt and ransacks the pouch of her striped blay petticoat
A phial, an Agnus Dei, a shrivelled potato and a celluloid doll fall out)

290

Sacred Heart of Mary, where were you at all at all?

(Bloom, mumbling, his eyes downcast, begins to bestow his parcels
in his filled pockets but desists, muttering.)

A VOICE

(sharply) Poldy!

BLOOM

Who? (he ducks and wards off a blow clumsily) At your service.

(He looks up. Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman
in Turkish costume stands before him. Opulent curves fill out her
scarlet trousers and jacket, slashed with gold. A wide yellow
cummerbund girdles her. A white yashmak, violet in the night,

300

covers her face, leaving free only her large dark eyes and raven
hair.)

hopes, crubeens for her supper, things to tell her, excuse, desire,
spellbound. A coin gleams on her forehead. On her feet are jewelled
toerings. Her ankles are linked by a slender fetterchain. Beside her a
camel, hooded with a turreting turban, waits. A silk ladder of
innumerable rungs climbs to his bobbing howdah. He ambles near
with disgruntled hindquarters. Fiercely she slaps his haunch, her
goldcurb wristbangles angriling, scolding him in Moorish.)

(The camel, lifting a foreleg, plucks from a tree a large mango fruit,

320

offers it to his mistress, blinking, in his cloven hoof, then droops his
head and, grunting, with uplifted neck, fumbles to kneel. Bloom
stoops his back for leapfrog.)

BLOOM

I can give you ... I mean as your business menagerer .. Mrs Marion .....
if
you ....

MARION

So you notice some change? (her hands passing slowly over her trinketed
stomacher, a slow friendly mockery in her eyes) O Poldy, Poldy, you
are a
poor old stick in the mud! Go and see life. See the wide world.

330

BLOOM

I was just going back for that lotion whitewax, orangeflower water.
Shop
closes early on Thursday. But the first thing in the morning. (he pats
divers
pockets) This moving kidney. Ah!

(He points to the south, then to the east. A cake of new clean lemon
soap arises, diffusing light and perfume.)

THE SOAP

We're a capital couple are Bloom and I.
He brightens the earth. I polish the sky.

(coughs gravely) Madam, when we last had this pleasure by letter
dated
the sixteenth instant ....

MRS BREEN

Mr Bloom! You down here in the haunts of sin! I caught you nicely!
Scamp!

BLOOM

(hurriedly) Not so loud my name. Whatever do you think of me?
Don't
give me away. Walls have ears. How do you do? It's ages since I. You're
looking splendid. Absolutely it. Seasonable weather we are having this
time

(holds up a finger) Now, don't tell a big fib! I know somebody
won't like
that. O just wait till I see Molly! (slily) Account for yourself
this very
sminute or woe betide you!

BLOOM

(looks behind) She often said she'd like to visit. Slumming.
The exotic, you
see. Negro servants in livery too if she had money. Othello black brute.
Eugene Stratton. Even the bones and cornerman at the Livermore christies.

For old sake' sake. I only meant a square party, a mixed marriage mingling
of our different little conjugials. You know I had a soft corner for you.
(gloomily) 'Twas I sent you that valentine of the dear gazelle.

MRS BREEN

Glory Alice, you do look a holy show! Killing simply. (she puts out
her
hand inquisitively) What are you hiding behind your back? Tell us,
there's
a dear.

440

BLOOM

(seizes her wrist with his free hand) Josie Powell that was,
prettiest deb in
Dublin. How time flies by! Do you remember, harking back in a
retrospective arrangement, Old Christmas night, Georgina Simpson's
housewarming while they were playing the Irving Bishop game, finding the
pin blindfold and thoughtreading? Subject, what is in this snuffbox?

MRS BREEN

You were the lion of the night with your seriocomic recitation and you
looked the part. You were always a favourite with the ladies.

BLOOM

450

(squire of dames, in dinner jacket with wateredsilk facings, blue
masonic
badge in his buttonhole, black bow and mother-of-pearl studs, a prismatic
champagne glass tilted in his hand) Ladies and gentlemen, I give you
Ireland, home and beauty.

(meaningfully dropping his voice) I confess I'm teapot with curiosity
to
find out whether some person's something is a little teapot at present.

MRS BREEN

460

(gushingly) Tremendously teapot! London's teapot and I'm simply
teapot
all over me! (she rubs sides with him) After the parlour mystery
games and
the crackers from the tree we sat on the staircase ottoman. Under the
mistletoe. Two is company.

BLOOM

(wearing a purple Napoleon hat with an amber halfmoon, his fingers
and
thumb passing slowly down to her soft moist meaty palm which she
surrenders gently) The witching hour of night. I took the splinter
out of
this hand, carefully, slowly. (tenderly, as he slips on her finger a
ruby ring)La ci darem la mano.

When you made your present choice they said it was beauty and the beast.
I
can never forgive you for that. (his clenched fist at his brow)
Think what it
means. All you meant to me then. (hoarsely) Woman, it's breaking
me!

(Denis Breen, whitetallhatted, with Wisdom Hely's sandwich-

480

boards, shuffles past them in carpet slippers, his dull beard
thrust out, muttering to right and left. Little Alf Bergan, cloaked in
the pall of the ace of spades, dogs him to left and right, doubled in
laughter.)

ALF BERGAN

(points jeering at the sandwichboards) U. p: up.

MRS BREEN

(to Bloom) High jinks below stairs. (she gives him the glad
eye) Why
didn't you kiss the spot to make it well? You wanted to.

BLOOM

490

(shocked) Molly's best friend! Could you?

MRS BREEN

(her pulpy tongue between her lips, offers a pigeon kiss) Hnhn.
The
answer is a lemon. Have you a little present for me there?

BLOOM

(offhandedly) Kosher. A snack for supper. The home without potted
meat
is incomplete. I was at Leah, Mrs Bandmann Palmer. Trenchant exponent
of Shakespeare. Unfortunately threw away the programme. Rattling good
place round there for pigs' feet. Feel.

(Richie Goulding, three ladies' hats pinned on his head, appears

500

weighted to one side by the black legal bag of Collis and Ward on
which a skull and crossbones are painted in white limewash. He
opens it and shows it full of polonies, kippered herrings, Findon
haddies and tightpacked pills.)

(in an oatmeal sporting suit, a sprig of woodbine in the lapel, tony
buff
shirt, shepherd's plaid Saint Andrew's cross scarftie, white spats, fawn
dustcoat on his arm, tawny red brogues, fieldglasses in bandolier and a
grey
billycock hat) Do you remember a long long time, years and years ago,
just

540

after Milly, Marionette we called her, was weaned when we all went
together to Fairyhouse races, was it?

I mean, Leopardstown. And Molly won seven shillings on a three year
old
named Nevertell and coming home along by Foxrock in that old fiveseater
shanderadan of a waggonette you were in your heyday then and you had
on that new hat of white velours with a surround of molefur that Mrs

550

Hayes advised you to buy because it was marked down to nineteen and
eleven, a bit of wire and an old rag of velveteen, and I'll lay you what
you
like she did it on purpose ....

MRS BREEN

She did, of course, the cat! Don't tell me! Nice adviser!

BLOOM

Because it didn't suit you one quarter as well as the other ducky little
tammy toque with the bird of paradise wing in it that I admired on you
and
you honestly looked just too fetching in it though it was a pity to kill
it, you
cruel naughty creature, little mite of a thing with a heart the size of
a

560

fullstop.

MRS BREEN

(squeezes his arm, simpers) Naughty cruel I was!

BLOOM

(low, secretly, ever more rapidly) And Molly was eating a sandwich
of
spiced beef out of Mrs Joe Gallaher's lunch basket. Frankly, though she
had her advisers or admirers, I never cared much for her style. She was
....

MRS BREEN

Too ....

BLOOM

570

Yes. And Molly was laughing because Rogers and Maggot O'Reilly were
mimicking a cock as we passed a farmhouse and Marcus Tertius Moses, the
tea merchant, drove past us in a gig with his daughter, Dancer Moses was
her name, and the poodle in her lap bridled up and you asked me if I ever
heard or read or knew or came across ....

MRS BREEN

(eagerly) Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

(She fades from his side. Followed by the whining dog he walks on =|BREa|=
towards hellsgates. In an archway a standing woman, bent forward,
her feet apart, pisses cowily. Outside a shuttered pub a bunch of

580

loiterers listen to a tale which their brokensnouted gaffer rasps out
with raucous humour. An armless pair of them flop wrestling,
growling, in maimed sodden playfight.)

THE GAFFER

(crouches, his voice twisted in his snout) And when Cairns came
down
from the scaffolding in Beaver street what was he after doing it into only
into the bucket of porter that was there waiting on the shavings for
Derwan's plasterers.

(He plodges through their sump towards the lighted street beyond.
From a bulge of window curtains a gramophone rears a battered
brazen trunk. In the shadow a shebeenkeeper haggles with the
navvy and the two redcoats.)

Wildgoose chase this. Disorderly houses. Lord knows where they are gone.
Drunks cover distance double quick. Nice mixup. Scene at Westland row.
Then jump in first class with third ticket. Then too far. Train with engine
behind. Might have taken me to Malahide or a siding for the night or

640

collision. Second drink does it. Once is a dose. What am I following him
for? Still, he's the best of that lot. If I hadn't heard about Mrs Beaufoy
Purefoy I wouldn't have gone and wouldn't have met. Kismet. He'll lose
that cash. Relieving office here. Good biz for cheapjacks, organs. What
do
ye lack? Soon got, soon gone. Might have lost my life too with that man-
gongwheeltracktrolleyglarejuggernaut only for presence of mind. Can't
always save you, though. If I had passed Truelock's window that day two
minutes later would have been shot. Absence of body. Still if bullet only
went through my coat get damages for shock, five hundred pounds. What
was he? Kildare street club toff. God help his gamekeeper.

pigsticky. Absurd I am. Waste of money. One and eightpence too much.(The retriever drives a cold snivelling muzzle against his hand, wagging
his
tail.) Strange how they take to me. Even that brute today. Better speak
to
him first. Like women they like rencontres. Stinks like a polecat.
Chacun
son got. He might be mad. Dogdays. Uncertain in his movements. Good
fellow! Fido! Good fellow! Garryowen! (The wolfdog sprawls on his back,
wriggling obscenely with begging paws, his long black tongue lolling out.)Influence of his surroundings. Give and have done with it. Provided
nobody. (Calling encouraging words he shambles back with a furtive
poacher's tread, dogged by the setter into a dark stalestunk corner. He

670

unrolls one parcel and goes to dump the crubeen softly but holds back and
feels the trotter.)Sizeable for threepence. But then I have it in
my left hand.
Calls for more effort. Why? Smaller from want of use. O, let it slide.
Two
and six.

(With regret he lets the unrolled crubeen and trotter slide. The
mastiff mauls the bundle clumsily and gluts himself with growling
greed, crunching the bones. Two raincaped watch approach, silent,
vigilant. They murmur together.)

(He points. Bob Doran, toppling from a high barstool, sways over
the munching spaniel.)

BOB DORAN

Towser. Give us the paw. Give the paw.

(The bulldog growls, his scruff standing, a gobbet of pig's knuckle
between his molars through which rabid scumspittle dribbles Bob
Doran falls silently into an area.)

SECOND WATCH

Prevention of cruelty to animals.

700

BLOOM

(enthusiastically) A noble work! I scolded that tramdriver on
Harold's
cross bridge for illusing the poor horse with his harness scab. Bad French
I
got for my pains. Of course it was frosty and the last tram. All tales
of
circus life are highly demoralising.

studs in his shirtfront, steps forward, holding a circus paperhoop, a
curling carriagewhip and a revolver with which he covers the
gorging boarhound.)

SIGNOR MAFFEI

710

(with a sinister smile) Ladies and gentlemen, my educated greyhound.
It
was I broke in the bucking broncho Ajax with my patent spiked saddle for
carnivores. Lash under the belly with a knotted thong. Block tackle and
a
strangling pulley will bring your lion to heel, no matter how fractious,
evenLeo ferox there, the Libyan maneater. A redhot crowbar and some
liniment
rubbing on the burning part produced Fritz of Amsterdam, the thinking
hyena. (he glares) I possess the Indian sign. The glint of my eye
does it
with these breastsparklers. (with a bewitching smile) I now introduce
Mademoiselle Ruby, the pride of the ring.

(produces from his heartpocket a crumpled yellow flower) This
is the
flower in question. It was given me by a man I don't know his name.
(plausibly) You know that old joke, rose of Castile. Bloom. The
change of
name. Virag. (he murmurs privately and confidentially) We are engaged
you see, sergeant. Lady in the case. Love entanglement. (he shoulders
the
second watch gently) Dash it all. It's a way we gallants have in the
navy.
Uniform that does it. (he turns gravely to the first watch) Still,
of course,
you do get your Waterloo sometimes. Drop in some evening and have a
glass of old Burgundy. (to the second watch gaily) I'll introduce
you,

(thickveiled, a crimson halter round her neck, a copy of the Irish
Times in
her hand, in tone of reproach, pointing) Henry! Leopold! Lionel, thou
lost
one! Clear my name.

FIRST WATCH

(sternly) Come to the station.

760

BLOOM

(scared, hats himself, steps back, then, plucking at his heart and
lifting his
right forearm on the square, he gives the sign and dueguard of fellowcraft)No, no, worshipful master, light of love. Mistaken identity. The Lyons
mail.
Lesurques and Dubosc. You remember the Childs fratricide case. We

(tears in his eyes, to Bloom) You ought to be thoroughly well
ashamed of
yourself.

BLOOM

Gentlemen of the jury, let me explain. A pure mare's nest. I am a man
misunderstood. I am being made a scapegoat of. I am a respectable married

780

man, without a stain on my character. I live in Eccles street. My wife,
I am
the daughter of a most distinguished commander, a gallant upstanding
gentleman, what do you call him, Majorgeneral Brian Tweedy, one of
Britain's fighting men who helped to win our battles. Got his majority
for
the heroic defence of Rorke's Drift.

FIRST WATCH

Regiment.

BLOOM

(turns to the gallery) The royal Dublins, boys, the salt of the
earth, known
the world over. I think I see some old comrades in arms up there among

790

you. The R. D. F., with our own Metropolitan police, guardians of our
homes, the pluckiest lads and the finest body of men, as physique, in the
service of our sovereign.

(his hand on the shoulder of the first watch) My old dad too
was a J. P.
I'm as staunch a Britisher as you are, sir. I fought with the colours for
king
and country in the absentminded war under general Gough in the park and
was disabled at Spion Kop and Bloemfontein, was mentioned in dispatches.

800

I did all a white man could. (with quiet feeling) Jim Bludso. Hold
her
nozzle again the bank.

FIRST WATCH

Profession or trade.

BLOOM

Well, I follow a literary occupation, author-journalist. In fact we
are just
bringing out a collection of prize stories of which I am the inventor,
something that is an entirely new departure. I am connected with the British
and Irish press. If you ring up ....

(Myles Crawford strides out jerkily, a quill between his teeth. His
scarlet beak blazes within the aureole of his straw hat He dangles a

810

hank of Spanish onions in one hand and holds with the other hand
a telephone receiver nozzle to his ear.)

(drawls) No, you aren't. Not by a long shot if I know it. I don't
see it
that's all. No born gentleman, no-one with the most rudimentary
promptings of a gentleman would stoop to such particularly loathsome
conduct. One of those, my lord. A plagiarist. A soapy sneak masquerading
as a litterateur. It's perfectly obvious that with the most inherent
baseness
he has cribbed some of my bestselling copy, really gorgeous stuff, a perfect
gem, the love passages in which are beneath suspicion. The Beaufoy books
of love and great possessions, with which your lordship is doubtless
familiar, are a household word throughout the kingdom.

830

BLOOM

(murmurs with hangdog meekness glum) That bit about the laughing
witch hand in hand I take exception to, if I may ...

BEAUFOY

(his lip upcurled, smiles superciliously on the court) You funny
ass, you!
You're too beastly awfully weird for words! I don't think you need over
excessively disincommodate yourself in that regard. My literary agent Mr
J. B. Pinker is in attendance. I presume, my lord, we shall receive the
usual
witnesses' fees, shan't we? We are considerably out of pocket over this
bally
pressman johnny, this jackdaw of Rheims, who has not even been to a

840

university.

BLOOM

(indistinctly) University of life. Bad art.

BEAUFOY

(shouts) It's a damnably foul lie, showing the moral rottenness
of the man!
(he extends his portfolio) We have here damning evidence, the corpus
delicti, my lord, a specimen of my maturer work disfigured by the hallmark
of the beast.

You low cad! You ought to be ducked in the horsepond, you rotter! (to
the
court) Why, look at the man's private life! Leading a quadruple existence!
Street angel and house devil. Not fit to be mentioned in mixed society!
The
archconspirator of the age!

(indignantly) I'm not a bad one. I bear a respectable character
and was

870

four months in my last place. I was in a situation, six pounds a year and
my
chances with Fridays out and I had to leave owing to his carryings on.

FIRST WATCH

What do you tax him with?

MARY DRISCOLL

He made a certain suggestion but I thought more of myself as poor as
I am.

BLOOM

(in housejacket of ripplecloth, flannel trousers, heelless slippers,
unshaven,
his hair rumpled: softly) I treated you white. I gave you mementos,
smart
emerald garters far above your station. Incautiously I took your part when

880

you were accused of pilfering. There's a medium in all things. Play cricket.

MARY DRISCOLL

(excitedly) As God is looking down on me this night if ever I
laid a hand to
them oylsters!

FIRST WATCH

The offence complained of? Did something happen?

MARY DRISCOLL

He surprised me in the rere of the premises, Your honour, when the missus
was out shopping one morning with a request for a safety pin. He held me
and I was discoloured in four places as a result. And he interfered twict

890

with my clothing.

BLOOM

She counterassaulted.

MARY DRISCOLL

(scornfully) I had more respect for the scouringbrush, so I had.
I
remonstrated with him, Your lord, and he remarked: keep it quiet.

(General laughter.)

GEORGE FOTTRELL

(clerk of the crown and peace, resonantly) Order in court! The
accused
will now make a bogus statement.

900

(Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a fullblown waterlily,
begins a long unintelligible speech. They would hear what counsel
had to say in his stirring address to the grand jury. He was down
and out but, though branded as a black sheep, if he might say so, he
meant to reform, to retrieve the memory of the past in a purely
sisterly way and return to nature as a purely domestic animal. A

sevenmonths' child, he had been carefully brought up and nurtured
by an aged bedridden parent. There might have been lapses of an
erring father but he wanted to turn over a new leaf and now, when
at long last in sight of the whipping post, to lead a homely life in the

910

evening of his days, permeated by the affectionate surroundings of
the heaving bosom of the family. An acclimatised Britisher, he had
seen that summer eve from the footplate of an engine cab of the
Loop line railway company while the rain refrained from falling
glimpses, as it were, through the windows of loveful households in
Dublin city and urban district of scenes truly rural of happiness of
the better land with Dockrell's wallpaper at one and ninepence a
dozen, innocent Britishborn bairns lisping prayers to the Sacred
Infant, youthful scholars grappling with their pensums or model
young ladies playing on the pianoforte or anon all with fervour

920

reciting the family rosary round the crackling Yulelog while in the
boreens and green lanes the colleens with their swains strolled what
times the strains of the organtoned melodeon Britanniametalbound
with four acting stops and twelvefold bellows, a sacrifice, greatest
bargain ever ....)

(from the presstable, coughs and calls) Cough it up, man. Get
it out in bits.

(The crossexamination proceeds re Bloom and the bucket. A
large
bucket. Bloom himself. Bowel trouble. In Beaver street Gripe, yes.
Quite bad. A plasterer's bucket. By walking stifflegged. Suffered
untold misery. Deadly agony. About noon. Love or burgundy. Yes,
some spinach. Crucial moment. He did not look in the bucket
Nobody. Rather a mess. Not completely. A Titbits back number
Uproar and catcalls. Bloom in a torn frockcoat stained with
whitewash, dinged silk hat sideways on his head, a strip of
stickingplaster across his nose, talks inaudibly.)

940

J. J. O'MOLLOY

(in barrister's grey wig and stuffgown, speaking with a voice of
pained
protest) This is no place for indecent levity at the expense of an
erring
mortal disguised in liquor. We are not in a beargarden nor at an Oxford
rag
nor is this a travesty of justice. My client is an infant, a poor foreign
immigrant who started scratch as a stowaway and is now trying to turn an
honest penny. The trumped up misdemeanour was due to a momentary

aberration of heredity, brought on by hallucination, such familiarities
as the
alleged guilty occurrence being quite permitted in my client's native place,
the land of the Pharaoh. Prima facie, I put it to you that there
was no

950

attempt at carnally knowing. Intimacy did not occur and the offence
complained of by Driscoll, that her virtue was solicited, was not repeated.
I
would deal in especial with atavism. There have been cases of shipwreck
and somnambulism in my client's family. If the accused could speak he
could a tale unfold - one of the strangest that have ever been narrated
between the covers of a book. He himself, my lord, is a physical wreck
from
cobbler's weak chest. His submission is that he is of Mongolian extraction
and irresponsible for his actions. Not all there, in fact.

turned in, opens his tiny mole's eyes and looks about him dazedly, passing
a
slow hand across his forehead. Then he hitches his belt sailor fashion
and
with a shrug of oriental obeisance salutes the court, pointing one thumb
heavenward.) Him makee velly muchee fine night. (he begins to lilt
simply)

Li li poo lil chile
Blingee pigfoot evly night
Payee two shilly ....

(He is howled down.)

J. J. O'MOLLOY

(hotly to the populace) This is a lonehand fight. By Hades, I
will not have

970

any client of mine gagged and badgered in this fashion by a pack of curs
and laughing hyenas. The Mosaic code has superseded the law of the
jungle. I say it and I say it emphatically, without wishing for one moment
to
defeat the ends of justice, accused was not accessory before the act and
prosecutrix has not been tampered with. The young person was treated by
defendant as if she were his very own daughter. (Bloom takes J. J.
O'Molloy's hand and raises it to his lips) I shall call rebutting evidence
to
prove up to the hilt that the hidden hand is again at its old game. When
in
doubt persecute Bloom. My client, an innately bashful man, would be the
last man in the world to do anything ungentlemanly which injured modesty

980

could object to or cast a stone at a girl who took the wrong turning when
some dastard, responsible for her condition, had worked his own sweet will
on her. He wants to go straight. I regard him as the whitest man I know.
He is down on his luck at present owing to the mortgaging of his extensive
property at Agendath Netaim in faraway Asia Minor, slides of which will

(J. J. O'Molloy steps on to a low plinth and holds the lapel of his
coat with solemnity. His face lengthens, grows pale and bearded,
with sunken eyes, the blotches of phthisis and hectic cheekbones of
John F. Taylor. He applies his handkerchief to his mouth and
scrutinises the galloping tide of rosepink blood.)

1000

J.J.O'MOLLOY

(almost voicelessly) Excuse me. I am suffering from a severe
chill, have
recently come from a sickbed. A few wellchosen words. (He assumes the
avine head, foxy moustache and proboscidal eloquence of Seymour
Bushe.) When the angel's book comes to be opened if aught that
the pensive bosom has inaugurated of soultransfigured and of
soultransfiguring deserves to live I say accord the prisoner at the bar
the
sacred benefit of the doubt.

(A paper with something written on it is handed into court.)

BLOOM

1010

(in court dress) Can give best references. Messrs Callan, Coleman.
Mr
Wisdom Hely J. P. My old chief Joe Cuffe. Mr V. B. Dillon, ex lord mayor
of Dublin. I have moved in the charmed circle of the highest .... Queens
of
Dublin society. (carelessly) I was just chatting this afternoon
at the
viceregal lodge to my old pals, sir Robert and lady Ball, astronomer royal
at the levee. Sir Bob, I said ......

(in lowcorsaged opal balldress and elbowlength ivory gloves, wearing
a
sabletrimmed brickquilted dolman, a comb of brilliants and panache of
osprey in her hair) Arrest him, constable. He wrote me an anonymous

1020

letter in prentice backhand when my husband was in the North Riding of
Tipperary on the Munster circuit, signed James Lovebirch. He said that
he
had seen from the gods my peerless globes as I sat in a box of the Theatre
Royal at a command performance of La Cigale. I deeply inflamed
him, he
said. He made improper overtures to me to misconduct myself at half past
four p.m. on the following Thursday, Dunsink time. He offered to send me
through the post a work of fiction by Monsieur Paul de Kock, entitled
The
Girl with the Three Pairs of Stays.

(in cap and seal coney mantle, wrapped up to the nose, steps out
of her

1030

brougham and scans through tortoiseshell quizzing-glasses which she takes
from inside her huge opossum muff) Also to me. Yes, I believe it is
the same
objectionable person. Because he closed my carriage door outside sir
Thornley Stoker's one sleety day during the cold snap of February
ninetythree when even the grid of the wastepipe and the ballstop in my
bath
cistern were frozen. Subsequently he enclosed a bloom of edelweiss culled
on the heights, as he said, in my honour. I had it examined by a botanical
expert and elicited the information that it was a blossom of the homegrown
potato plant purloined from a forcingcase of the model farm.

He addressed me in several handwritings with fulsome compliments as
a
Venus in furs and alleged profound pity for my frostbound coachman
Palmer while in the same breath he expressed himself as envious of his
earflaps and fleecy sheepskins and of his fortunate proximity to my person,
when standing behind my chair wearing my livery and the armorial
bearings of the Bellingham escutcheon garnished sable, a buck's head
couped or. He lauded almost extravagantly my nether extremities, my
swelling calves in silk hose drawn up to the limit, and eulogised glowingly
my other hidden treasures in priceless lace which, he said, he could conjure
up. He urged me (stating that he felt it his mission in life to urge me)
to

1060

defile the marriage bed, to commit adultery at the earliest possible
opportunity.

(in amazon costume, hard hat, jackboots cockspurred, vermilion waistcoat,
fawn musketeer gauntlets with braided drums, long train held up and
hunting crop with which she strikes her welt constantly) Also me. Because
he saw me on the polo ground of the Phoenix park at the match All Ireland
versus the Rest of Ireland. My eyes, I know, shone divinely as I watched
Captain Slogger Dennehy of the Inniskillings win the final chukkar on his

1070

darling cob Centaur. This plebeian Don Juan observed me from behind
a
hackney car and sent me in double envelopes an obscene photograph, such
as are sold after dark on Paris boulevards, insulting to any lady. I have
it
still. It represents a partially nude senorita, frail and lovely (his wife,
as he
solemnly assured me, taken by him from nature), practising illicit
intercourse with a muscular torero, evidently a blackguard. He urged me
to
do likewise, to misbehave, to sin with officers of the garrison. He implored
me to soil his letter in an unspeakable manner, to chastise him as he richly
deserves, to bestride and ride him, to give him a most vicious
horsewhipping.

Very much so! I'll make it hot for you. I'll make you dance Jack Latten
for
that.

MRS BELLINGHAM

Tan his breech well, the upstart! Write the stars and stripes on it!

MRS YELVERTON BARRY

Disgraceful! There's no excuse for him! A married man!

BLOOM

1100

All these people. I meant only the spanking idea. A warm tingling glow
without effusion. Refined birching to stimulate the circulation.

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS

(laughs derisively) O, did you, my fine fellow? Well, by the
living God,
you'll get the surprise of your life now, believe me, the most unmerciful
hiding a man ever bargained for. You have lashed the dormant tigress in
my
nature into fury.

MRS BELLINGHAM

(shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses vindictively) Make him
smart,
Hanna dear. Give him ginger. Thrash the mongrel within an inch of his

(severely) Don't do so on any account, Mrs Talboys! He should
be
soundly trounced!

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS

(unbuttoning her gauntlet violently) I'll do no such thing. Pigdog
and

1120

always was ever since he was pupped! To dare address me! I'll flog him
black and blue in the public streets. I'll dig my spurs in him up to the
rowel.
He is a wellknown cuckold. (she swishes her huntingcrop savagely in
the
air) Take down his trousers without loss of time. Come here, sir! Quick!
Ready?

(loudly) Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a wellknown
dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold and a public nuisance to
the citizens of Dublin and whereas at this commission of assizes the most
honourable ....

(His Honour, sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, in judicial
garb of grey stone rises from the bench, stonebearded. He bears in
his arms an umbrella sceptre. From his forehead arise starkly the

I will put an end to this white slave traffic and rid Dublin of this
odious
pest. Scandalous! (he dons the black cap) Let him be taken, Mr Subsheriff,
from the dock where he now stands and detained in custody in Mountjoy
prison during His Majesty's pleasure and there be hanged by the neck until
he is dead and therein fail not at your peril or may the Lord have mercy
on
your soul. Remove him.

1180

(A black skullcap descends upon his head. The subsheriff Long
John Fanning appears, smoking a pungent Henry Clay.)

(H. Rumbold, master barber, in a bloodcoloured jerkin and
tanner's apron, a rope coiled over his shoulder, mounts the block. A
life preserver and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in his belt He
rubs grimly his grappling hands, knobbed with knuckledusters.)

(desperately) Wait. Stop. Gulls. Good heart. I saw. Innocence.
Girl in the
monkeyhouse. Zoo. Lewd chimpanzee. (breathlessly) Pelvic basin.
Her
artless blush unmanned me. (overcome with emotion) I left the precincts.
(he turns to a figure in the crowd, appealing) Hynes, may I speak
to you?
You know me. That three shillings you can keep. If you want a little
more .....

1200

HYNES

(coldly) You are a perfect stranger.

SECOND WATCH

(points to the corner) The bomb is here.

FIRST WATCH

Infernal machine with a time fuse.

BLOOM

No, no. Pig's feet. I was at a funeral.

FIRST WATCH

(draws his truncheon) Liar!

1210

(The beagle lifts his snout, showing the grey scorbutic face of
Paddy Dignam. He has gnawed all. He exhales a putrid carcasefed
breath. He grows to human size and shape. His dachshund coat
becomes a brown mortuary habit His green eye flashes bloodshot
Half of one ear, all the nose and both thumbs are ghouleaten.)

PADDY DIGNAM

(in a hollow voice) It is true. It was my funeral. Doctor Finucane
pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the disease from natural
causes.

(earnestly) Once I was in the employ of Mr J. H. Menton, solicitor,
commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27 Bachelor's Walk. Now I am
defunct, the wall of the heart hypertrophied. Hard lines. The poor wife
was
awfully cut up. How is she bearing it? Keep her off that bottle of sherry.

1240

(he looks round him) A lamp. I must satisfy an animal need. That
buttermilk didn't agree with me.

(The portly figure of John O'Connell, caretaker, stands forth,
holding a bunch of keys tied with crape. Beside him stands Father
Coffey, chaplain, toadbellied, wrynecked, in a surplice and
bandanna nightcap, holding sleepily a staff twisted poppies.)

(He worms down through a coalhole, his brown habit trailing its
tether over rattling pebbles. After him toddles an obese grandfather
rat on fungus turtle paws under a grey carapace. Dignam's voice,
muffled, is heard baying under ground: Dignam's dead and gone
below. Tom Rochford, robinredbreasted, in cap and breeches,
jumps from his twocolumned machine.)

TOM ROCHFORD

(a hand to his breastbone, bows) Reuben J. A florin I find him.
(he fixes
the manhole with a resolute stare) My turn now on. Follow me up to

1270

Carlow.

(He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the air and is engulfed in
the coalhole. Two discs on the columns wobble, eyes of nought All
recedes.

Bloom plodges forward again through the sump. Kisses
chirp amid the rifts of fog A piano sounds. He stands before a
lighted house, listening. The kisses, winging from their bowers fly
about him, twittering, warbling, cooing.)

(Zoe Higgins, a young whore in a sapphire slip, closed with three
bronze buckles, a slim black velvet fillet round her throat, nods,
trips down the steps and accosts him.)

ZOE

Are you looking for someone? He's inside with his friend.

BLOOM

1290

Is this Mrs Mack's?

ZOE

No, eightyone. Mrs Cohen's. You might go farther and fare worse. Mother
Slipperslapper. (familiarly) She's on the job herself tonight with
the vet her
tipster that gives her all the winners and pays for her son in Oxford.
Working overtime but her luck's turned today. (suspiciously) You're
not
his father, are you?

BLOOM

Not I!

ZOE

1300

You both in black. Has little mousey any tickles tonight?

(His skin, alert, feels her fingertips approach. A hand glides over
his left thigh.)

ZOE

How's the nuts?

BLOOM

Off side. Curiously they are on the right. Heavier, I suppose. One in
a
million my tailor, Mesias, says.

ZOE

(in sudden alarm) You've a hard chancre.

1310

BLOOM

Not likely.

ZOE

I feel it.

(Her hand slides into his left trouser pocket and brings out a hard
black shrivelled potato. She regards it and Bloom with dumb moist
lips.)

BLOOM

A talisman. Heirloom.

ZOE

For Zoe? For keeps? For being so nice, eh?

(She puts the potato greedily into a pocket then links his arm,
cuddling him with supple warmth. He smiles uneasily. Slowly, note
by note, oriental music is played. He gazes in the tawny crystal of
her eyes, ringed with kohol. His smile softens.)

1320

ZOE

You'll know me the next time.

BLOOM

(forlornly) I never loved a dear gazelle but it was sure to ....

(Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the mountains. Near are lakes.
Round their shores file shadows black of cedargroves. Aroma rises,
a strong hairgrowth of resin. It burns, the orient, a sky of sapphire,
cleft by the bronze flight of eagles. Under it lies the womancity
nude, white, still, cool, in luxury. A fountain murmurs among
damask roses. Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes. A

him a cloying breath of stale garlic The roses draw apart, disclose a
sepulchre of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones.)

BLOOM

(draws back, mechanically caressing her right bub with a flat awkward
hand) Are you a Dublin girl?

ZOE

(catches a stray hair deftly and twists it to her coil) No bloody
fear. I'm
English. Have you a swaggerroot?

BLOOM

(as before) Rarely smoke, dear. Cigar now and then. Childish
device.

1350

(lewdly) The mouth can be better engaged than with a cylinder of
rank
weed.

ZOE

Go on. Make a stump speech out of it.

BLOOM

(in workman's corduroy overalls, black gansy with red floating tie
and
apache cap) Mankind is incorrigible. Sir Walter Ralegh brought from
the
new world that potato and that weed, the one a killer of pestilence by
absorption, the other a poisoner of the ear, eye, heart, memory, will
understanding, all. That is to say he brought the poison a hundred years

1360

before another person whose name I forget brought the food. Suicide. Lies.
All our habits. Why, look at our public life!

(Midnight chimes from distant steeples.)

THE CHIMES

Turn again, Leopold! Lord mayor of Dublin!

BLOOM

(in alderman's gown and chain) Electors of Arran Quay, Inns Quay,
Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline, I say, from the
cattlemarket to the river. That's the music of the future. That's my
programme. Cui bono? But our bucaneering Vanderdeckens in their

1370

phantom ship of finance .....

AN ELECTOR

Three times three for our future chief magistrate!

(The aurora borealis of the torchlight procession leaps.)

THE TORCHBEARERS

Hooray!

(Several wellknown burgesses, city magnates and freemen of the
city shake hands with Bloom and congratulate him. Timothy
Harrington, late thrice Lord Mayor of Dublin, imposing in mayoral
scarlet, gold chain and white silk tie, confers with councillor Lorcan

1380

Sherlock, locum tenens. They nod vigorously in agreement.)

LATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON

(in scarlet robe with mace, gold mayoral chain and large white silk
scarf)That alderman sir Leo Bloom's speech be printed at the expense of the
ratepayers. That the house in which he was born be ornamented with a
commemorative tablet and that the thoroughfare hitherto known as Cow
Parlour off Cork street be henceforth designated Boulevard Bloom.

COUNCILLOR LORCAN SHERLOCK

Carried unanimously.

BLOOM

1390

(impassionedly) These flying Dutchmen or lying Dutchmen as they
recline
in their upholstered poop, casting dice, what reck they? Machines is their
cry, their chimera, their panacea. Laboursaving apparatuses, supplanters,
bugbears, manufactured monsters for mutual murder, hideous hobgoblins
produced by a horde of capitalistic lusts upon our prostituted labour.
The
poor man starves while they are grassing their royal mountain stags or
shooting peasants and phartridges in their purblind pomp of pelf and
power. But their reign is rover for rever and ever and ev ...

Mah Ttob Melek Israel spans the street All the windows are
thronged with sightseers, chiefly ladies. Along the route the
regiments of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, the King's Own Scottish
Borderers, the Cameron Highlanders and the Welsh Fusiliers
standing to attention, keep back the crowd. Boys from High school
are perched on the lampposts, telegraph poles, windowsills,
cornices, gutters, chimneypots, railings, rainspouts, whistling and
cheering The pillar of the cloud appears. A fife and drum band is
heard in the distance playing the Kol Nidre. The beaters approach
with imperial eagles hoisted, trailing banners and waving oriental

1410

palms. The chryselephantine papal standard rises high, surrounded
by pennons of the civic flag. The van of the procession appears
headed by John Howard Parnell, city marshal, in a chessboard
tabard, the Athlone poursuivant and Ulster King of Arms. They are
followed by the Right Honourable Joseph Hutchinson, lord mayor
of Dublin, his lordship the lord mayor of Cork, their worships the
mayors of Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Waterford, twentyeight
Irish representative peers, sirdars, grandees and maharajahs bearing
the cloth of estate, the Dublin Metropolitan Fire Brigade, the
chapter of the saints of finance in their plutocratic order of

1420

precedence, the bishop of Down and Connor, His Eminence
Michael cardinal Logue, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all
Ireland, His Grace, the most reverend Dr William Alexander,

archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, the chief rabbi, the
presbyterian moderator, the heads of the baptist, anabaptist,
methodist and Moravian chapels and the honorary secretary of the
society of friends. After them march the guilds and trades and
trainbands with flying colours: coopers, bird fanciers, millwrights,
newspaper canvassers, law scriveners, masseurs, vintners,
trussmakers, chimneysweeps, lard refiners, tabinet and poplin

the chalice and bible. Four buglers on foot blow a sennet. Beefeaters
reply, winding clarions of welcome. Under an arch of triumph
Bloom appears, bareheaded, in a crimson velvet mantle trimmed
with ermine, bearing Saint Edward's staff the orb and sceptre with
the dove, the curtana. He is seated on a milkwhite horse with long
flowing crimson tail, richly caparisoned, with golden headstall. Wild
excitement. The ladies from their balconies throw down rosepetals.
The air is perfumed with essences. The men cheer. Bloom's boys
run amid the bystanders with branches of hawthorn and
wrenbushes.)

1450

BLOOM'S BOYS

The wren, the wren,
The king of all birds,
Saint Stephen's his day
Was caught in the furze.

A BLACKSMITH

(murmurs) For the honour of God! And is that Bloom? He scarcely
looks
thirtyone.

A PAVIOR AND FLAGGER

That's the famous Bloom now, the world's greatest reformer. Hats off!

1460

(All uncover their heads. Women whisper eagerly.)

A MILLIONAIRESS

(richly) Isn't he simply wonderful?

A NOBLEWOMAN

(nobly) All that man has seen!

A FEMINIST

(masculinely) And done!

A BELLHANGER

A classic face! He has the forehead of a thinker.

(Bloom's weather. A sunburst appears in the northwest.)

1470

THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR

I here present your undoubted emperor-president and king-chairman, the
most serene and potent and very puissant ruler of this realm. God save
Leopold the First!

ALL

God save Leopold the First!

BLOOM

(in dalmatic and purple mantle, to the bishop of Down and Connor,
with
dignity) Thanks, somewhat eminent sir.

1480

WILLIAM, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH

(in purple stock and shovel hat) Will you to your power cause
law and
mercy to be executed in all your judgments in Ireland and territories
thereunto belonging?

BLOOM

(placing his right hand on his testicles, swears) So may the
Creator deal
with me. All this I promise to do.

(Bloom assumes a mantle of cloth of gold and puts on a ruby ring
He ascends and stands on the stone of destiny. The representative
peers put on at the same time their twentyeight crowns. Joybells ring
in Christ church, Saint Patrick's, George's and gay Malahide.

Mirus bazaar fireworks go up from all sides with symbolical
phallopyrotechnic designs. The peers do homage, one by one,
approaching and genuflecting.)

THE PEERS

I do become your liege man of life and limb to earthly worship.

1500

(Bloom holds up his right hand on which sparkles the Koh-i-Noor
diamond. His palfrey neighs. Immediate silence. Wireless
intercontinental and interplanetary transmitters are set for reception
of message.)

BLOOM

My subjects! We hereby nominate our faithful charger Copula Felix
hereditary Grand Vizier and announce that we have this day repudiated
our former spouse and have bestowed our royal hand upon the princess
Selene, the splendour of night.

(The former morganatic spouse of Bloom is hastily removed in the

1510

Black Maria. The princess Selene, in moonblue robes, a silver
crescent on her head, descends from a Sedan chair, borne by two
giants. An outburst of cheering.)

JOHN HOWARD PARNELL

(raises the royal standard) Illustrious Bloom! Successor to my
famous
brother!

BLOOM

(embraces John Howard Parnell) We thank you from our heart, John,
for
this right royal welcome to green Erin, the promised land of our common
ancestors.

1520

(The freedom of the city is presented to him embodied in a charter.
The keys of Dublin, crossed on a crimson cushion, are given to him.
He shows all that he is wearing green socks.)

TOM KERNAN

You deserve it, your honour.

BLOOM

On this day twenty years ago we overcame the hereditary enemy at
Ladysmith. Our howitzers and camel swivel guns played on his lines with
telling effect. Half a league onward! They charge! All is lost now! Do
we
yield? No! We drive them headlong! Lo! We charge! Deploying to the left

1530

our light horse swept across the heights of Plevna and, uttering their
warcryBonafide Sabaoth, sabred the Saracen gunners to a man.

THE CHAPEL OF FREEMAN TYPESETTERS

Hear! Hear!

JOHN WYSE NOLAN

There's the man that got away James Stephens.

A BLUECOAT SCHOOLBOY

Bravo!

AN OLD RESIDENT

You're a credit to your country, sir, that's what you are.

1540

AN APPLEWOMAN

He's a man like Ireland wants.

BLOOM

My beloved subjects, a new era is about to dawn. I, Bloom, tell you
verily it
is even now at hand. Yea, on the word of a Bloom, ye shall ere long enter
into the golden city which is to be, the new Bloomusalem in the Nova
Hibernia of the future.

(Thirtytwo workmen, wearing rosettes, from all the counties of
Ireland, under the guidance of Derwan the builder, construct the
new Bloomusalem. It is a colossal edifice with crystal roof, built in

1550

the shape of a huge pork kidney, containing forty thousand rooms.
In the course of its extension several buildings and monuments are
demolished. Government offices are temporarily transferred to
railway sheds. Numerous houses are razed to the ground. The
inhabitants are lodged in barrels and boxes, all marked in red with
the letters: L. B. Several paupers fill from a ladder. A part of the
walls of Dublin, crowded with loyal sightseers, collapses.)

THE SIGHTSEERS

(dying) Morituri te salutant. (they die)

(A man in a brown macintosh springs up through a trapdoor. He

1560

points an elongated finger at Bloom.)

THE MAN IN THE MACINTOSH

Don't you believe a word he says. That man is Leopold M'Intosh, the
notorious fireraiser. His real name is Higgins.

BLOOM

Shoot him! Dog of a christian! So much for M'Intosh!

(A cannonshot. The man in the macintosh disappears. Bloom with
his sceptre strikes down poppies. The instantaneous deaths of many
powerful enemies, graziers, members of parliament, members of
standing committees, are reported. Bloom's bodyguard distribute

(infantilic), so Meals for 7/6 (culinic), Was Jesus a Sun Myth?
(historic), Expel That Pain (medic), Infant's Compendium of the
Universe (cosmic), Let's All Chortle (hilaric), Canvasser's Vade
Mecum (journalic), Loveletters of Mother Assistant (erotic), Who's
Who in Space (astric), Songs that Reached Our Heart (melodic),
Pennywise's Way to Wealth (parsimonic). A general rush and
scramble. Women press forward to touch the hem of Bloom's robe.
The lady Gwendolen Dubedat bursts through the throng, leaps on
his horse and kisses him on both cheeks amid great acclamation. A
magnesium flashlight photograph is taken. Babes and sucklings are

(An official translation is read by Jimmy Henry, assistant town
clerk.)

JIMMY HENRY

1630

The Court of Conscience is now open. His Most Catholic Majesty will
now
administer open air justice. Free medical and legal advice, solution of
doubles and other problems. All cordially invited. Given at this our loyal
city of Dublin in the year I of the Paradisiacal Era.

PADDY LEONARD

What am I to do about my rates and taxes?

BLOOM

Pay them, my friend.

PADDY LEONARD

Thank you.

1640

NOSEY FLYNN

Can I raise a mortgage on my fire insurance?

BLOOM

(obdurately) Sirs, take notice that by the law of torts you are
bound over
in your own recognisances for six months in the sum of five pounds.

When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform of the Austrian
despot in a dank prison where was yours?

BEN DOLLARD

Pansies?

BLOOM

Embellish (beautify) suburban gardens.

BEN DOLLARD

1670

When twins arrive?

BLOOM

Father (pater, dad) starts thinking.

LARRY O'ROURKE

An eightday licence for my new premises. You remember me, sir Leo, when
you were in number seven. I'm sending around a dozen of stout for the
missus.

BLOOM

(coldly) You have the advantage of me. Lady Bloom accepts no
presents.

CROFTON

1680

This is indeed a festivity.

BLOOM

(solemnly) You call it a festivity. I call it a sacrament.

ALEXANDER KEYES

When will we have our own house of keys?

BLOOM

I stand for the reform of municipal morals and the plain ten
commandments. New worlds for old. Union of all, jew, moslem and gentile.
Three acres and a cow for all children of nature. Saloon motor hearses.
Compulsory manual labour for all. All parks open to the public day and

1690

night. Electric dishscrubbers. Tuberculosis, lunacy, war and mendicancy
must now cease. General amnesty, weekly carnival with masked licence,
bonuses for all, esperanto the universal language with universal
brotherhood. No more patriotism of barspongers and dropsical impostors.
Free money, free rent, free love and a free lay church in a free lay state.

O'MADDEN BURKE

Free fox in a free henroost.

DAVY BYRNE

(yawning) Iiiiiiiiiaaaaaaach!

BLOOM

1700

Mixed races and mixed marriage.

LENEHAN

What about mixed bathing?

(Bloom explains to those near him his schemes for social
regeneration. All agree with him. The keeper of the Kildare street
museum appears, dragging a lorry on which are the shaking statues
of several naked goddesses, Venus Callipyge, Venus Pandemos,
Venus Metempsychosis, and plaster figures, also naked, representing
the new nine muses, Commerce, Operatic Music, Amor, Publicity,
Manufacture, Liberty of Speech, Plural Voting, Gastronomy,

He is an episcopalian, an agnostic, an anythingarian seeking to overthrow
our holy faith.

MRS RIORDAN

(tears up her will) I'm disappointed in you! You bad man!

MOTHER GROGAN

(removes her boot to throw it at Bloom) You beast! You abominable
person!

1720

NOSEY FLYNN

Give us a tune, Bloom. One of the old sweet songs.

BLOOM

(with rollicking humour)

I vowed that I never would leave her,
She turned out a cruel deceiver.
With my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom.

HOPPY HOLOHAN

Good old Bloom! There's nobody like him after all.

PADDY LEONARD

1730

Stage Irishman!

BLOOM

What railway opera is like a tramline in Gibraltar? The Rows of Casteele.

(Laughter.)

LENEHAN

Plagiarist! Down with Bloom!

THE VEILED SIBYL

(enthusiastically) I'm a Bloomite and I glory in it. I believe
in him in spite
of all. I'd give my life for him, the funniest man on earth.

BLOOM

1740

(winks at the bystanders) I bet she's a bonny lassie.

THEODORE PUREFOY

(in fishingcap and oilskin jacket) He employs a mechanical device
to
frustrate the sacred ends of nature.

THE VEILED SIBYL

(stabs herself) My hero god! (she dies)

(Many most attractive and enthusiastic women also commit suicide
by stabbing, drowning, drinking prussic acid, aconite, arsenic,
opening their veins, refusing food, casting themselves under
steamrollers, from the top of Nelson's Pillar, into the great vat of

1750

Guinness's brewery, asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads
in gasovens, hanging themselves in stylish garters, leaping from
windows of different storeys.)

ALEXANDER J DOWIE

(violently) Fellowchristians and antiBloomites, the man called
Bloom is
from the roots of hell, a disgrace to christian men. A fiendish libertine
from
his earliest years this stinking goat of Mendes gave precocious signs of
infantile debauchery, recalling the cities of the plain, with a dissolute
granddam. This vile hypocrite, bronzed with infamy, is the white bull
mentioned in the Apocalypse. A worshipper of the Scarlet Woman, intrigue

1760

is the very breath of his nostrils. The stake faggots and the caldron of
boiling oil are for him. Caliban!

heaven, I am guiltless as the unsunned snow! It was my brother Henry. He
is my double. He lives in number 2 Dolphin's Barn. Slander, the viper,
has
wrongfully accused me. Fellowcountrymen, sgeul i mbarr bata coisde gan
capall. I call on my old friend, Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist,
to give
medical testimony on my behalf.

DR MULLIGAN

(in motor jerkin, green motorgoggles on his brow) Dr Bloom is
bisexually
abnormal. He has recently escaped from Dr Eustace's private asylum for
demented gentlemen. Born out of bedlock hereditary epilepsy is present,
the
consequence of unbridled lust. Traces of elephantiasis have been discovered

1780

among his ascendants. There are marked symptoms of chronic
exhibitionism. Ambidexterity is also latent. He is prematurely bald from
selfabuse, perversely idealistic in consequence, a reformed rake, and has
metal teeth. In consequence of a family complex he has temporarily lost
his
memory and I believe him to be more sinned against than sinning. I have
made a pervaginal examination and, after application of the acid test to
5427 anal, axillary, pectoral and pubic hairs, I declare him to be virgo
intacta.

(Bloom holds his high grade hat over his genital organs.)

1790

DR MADDEN

Hypsospadia is also marked. In the interest of coming generations I
suggest
that the parts affected should be preserved in spirits of wine in the national
teratological museum.

DR CROTTHERS

I have examined the patient's urine. It is albuminoid. Salivation is
insufficient, the patellar reflex intermittent.

DR PUNCH COSTELLO

The fetor judaicus is most perceptible.

DR DIXON

1800

(reads a bill of health) Professor Bloom is a finished example
of the new
womanly man. His moral nature is simple and lovable. Many have found
him a dear man, a dear person. He is a rather quaint fellow on the whole,
coy though not feebleminded in the medical sense. He has written a really
beautiful letter, a poem in itself, to the court missionary of the Reformed
Priests' Protection Society which clears up everything. He is practically
a
total abstainer and I can affirm that he sleeps on a straw litter and eats
the
most Spartan food, cold dried grocer's peas. He wears a hairshirt of pure
Irish manufacture winter and summer and scourges himself every
Saturday. He was, I understand, at one time a firstclass misdemeanant in

1810

Glencree reformatory. Another report states that he was a very posthumous
child. I appeal for clemency in the name of the most sacred word our vocal
organs have ever been called upon to speak. He is about to have a baby.

(Bloom embraces her tightly and bears eight male yellow and white
children. They appear on a redcarpeted staircase adorned with
expensive plants. All the octuplets are handsome, with valuable
metallic faces, wellmade, respectably dressed and wellconducted,
speaking five modern languages fluently and interested in various
arts and sciences. Each has his name printed in legible letters on his
shirtfront: Nasodoro, Goldfinger, Chrysostomos, Maindore,

1830

Silversmile, Silberselber, Vifargent, Panargyros. They are
immediately appointed to positions of high public trust in several
different countries as managing directors of banks, traffic managers
of railways, chairmen of limited liability companies, vicechairmen
of hotel syndicates.)

A VOICE

Bloom, are you the Messiah ben Joseph or ben David?

BLOOM

(darkly) You have said it.

BROTHER BUZZ

1840

Then perform a miracle like Father Charles.

BANTAM LYONS

Prophesy who will win the Saint Leger.

(Bloom walks on a net, covers his left eye with his left ear, passes
through several walls, climbs Nelson's Pillar, hangs from the top
ledge by his eyelids, eats twelve dozen oysters (shells included),
heals several sufferers from king's evil, contracts his face so as to
resemble many historical personages, Lord Beaconsfield, Lord
Byron, Wat Tyler, Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides, Moses
Mendelssohn, Henry Irving, Rip van Winkle, Kossuth, Jean Jacques

(in ephod and huntingcap, announces) And he shall carry the sins
of the
people to Azazel, the spirit which is in the wilderness, and to Lilith,
the
nighthag. And they shall stone him and defile him, yea, all from Agendath
Netaim and from Mizraim, the land of Ham.

(All the people cast soft pantomime stones at Bloom. Many bonafide
travellers and ownerless dogs come near him and defile him.
Mastiansky and Citron approach in gaberdines, wearing long
earlocks. They wag their beards at Bloom.)

(Reuben J Dodd, blackbearded Iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing on
his shoulders the drowned corpse of his son, approaches the
pillory.)

1920

REUBEN J

(whispers hoarsely) The squeak is out. A split is gone for the
flatties. Nip
the first rattler.

THE FIRE BRIGADE

Pflaap!

BROTHER BUZZ

(Invests Bloom in a yellow habit with embroidery of painted flames
and
high pointed hat He places a bag of gunpowder round his neck and hands
him over to the civil power, saying) Forgive him his trespasses.

(The daughters of Erin, in black garments, with large prayerbooks
and long lighted candles in their hands, kneel down and pray.)

THE DAUGHTERS OF ERIN

1940

Kidney of Bloom, pray for us
Flower of the Bath, pray for us
Mentor of Menton, pray for us
Canvasser for the Freeman, pray for us
Charitable Mason, pray for us
Wandering Soap, pray for us
Sweets of Sin, pray for us
Music without Words, pray for us
Reprover of the Citizen, pray for us
Friend of all Frillies, pray for us

1950

Midwife Most Merciful, pray for us
Potato Preservative against Plague and Pestilence, pray for us.

(in caubeen with clay pipe stuck in the band, dusty brogues, an emigrant's

1960

red handkerchief bundle in his hand, leading a black bogoak pig by a
sugaun, with a smile in his eye) Let me be going now, woman of the
house,
for by all the goats in Connemara I'm after having the father and mother
of
a bating. (with a tear in his eye) All insanity. Patriotism, sorrow
for the
dead, music, future of the race. To be or not to be. Life's dream is o'er.
End
it peacefully. They can live on. (he gazes far away mournfully)
I am
ruined. A few pastilles of aconite. The blinds drawn. A letter. Then lie
back
to rest. (he breathes softly) No more. I have lived. Fare. Farewell.

ZOE

(stiffly, her finger in her neckfillet) Honest? Till the next
time. (she sneers)

1970

Suppose you got up the wrong side of the bed or came too quick with your
best girl. O, I can read your thoughts!

BLOOM

(bitterly) Man and woman, love, what is it? A cork and bottle.
I'm sick of
it. Let everything rip.

(repentantly) I am very disagreeable. You are a necessary evil.
Where are

1980

you from? London?

ZOE

(glibly) Hog's Norton where the pigs plays the organs. I'm Yorkshire
born. (she holds his hand which is feeling for her nipple) I say,
Tommy
Tittlemouse. Stop that and begin worse. Have you cash for a short time?
Ten shillings?

BLOOM

(smiles, nods slowly) More, houri, more.

ZOE

And more's mother? (she pats him offhandedly with velvet paws)
Are you

1990

coming into the musicroom to see our new pianola? Come and I'll peel off.

BLOOM

(feeling his occiput dubiously with the unparalleled embarrassment
of a
harassed pedlar gauging the symmetry of her peeled pears) Somebody
would be dreadfully jealous if she knew. The greeneyed monster.
(earnestly) You know how difficult it is. I needn't tell you.

(in babylinen and pelisse, bigheaded, with a caul of dark hair, fixes
big eyes
on her fluid slip and counts its bronze buckles with a chubby finger, his
moist tongue lolling and lisping) One two tlee: tlee tlwo tlone.

THE BUCKLES

Love me. Love me not. Love me.

ZOE

2010

Silent means consent. (With little parted talons she captures his
hand, her
forefinger giving to his palm the passtouch of secret monitor, luring him
to
doom.) Hot hands cold gizzard.

(He hesitates amid scents, music, temptations. She leads him
towards the steps, drawing him by the odour of her armpits, the vice
of her painted eyes, the rustle of her slip in whose sinuous folds
lurks the lion reek of all the male brutes that have possessed her.)

THE MALE BRUTES

(exhaling sulphur of rut and dung and ramping in their loosebox,
faintly
roaring, their drugged heads swaying to and fro) Good!

2020

(Zoe and Bloom reach the doorway where two sister whores are
seated. They examine him curiously from under their pencilled
brows and smile to his hasty bow. He trips awkwardly.)

ZOE

(her lucky hand instantly saving him) Hoopsa! Don't fall upstairs.

BLOOM

The just man falls seven times. (he stands aside at the threshold)
After you
is good manners.

ZOE

Ladies first, gentlemen after.

2030

(She crosses the threshold. He hesitates. She turns and, holding
out
her hands, draws him over. He hops. On the antlered rack of the
hall hang a man 's hat and waterproof. Bloom uncovers himself but,
seeing them, frowns, then smiles, preoccupied. A door on the return
landing is flung open. A man in purple shirt and grey trousers,
brownsocked, passes with an ape's gait, his bald head and goatee
beard upheld, hugging a full waterjugjar, his twotailed black braces
dangling at heels. Averting his face quickly Bloom bends to examine
on the halltable the spaniel eyes of a running fox: then, his lifted
head sniffing, follows Zoe into the musicroom. A shade of mauve

2040

tissuepaper dims the light of the chandelier. Round and round a
moth flies, colliding, escaping. The floor is covered with an oilcloth
mosaic of jade and azure and cinnabar rhomboids. Footmarks are
stamped over it in all senses, heel to heel, heel to hollow, toe to toe,

feet locked, a morris of shuffling feet without body phantoms, all
in
a scrimmage higgledypiggledy. The walls are tapestried with a paper
of yewfronds and clear glades. In the grate is spread a screen of
peacock feathers. Lynch squats crosslegged on the hearthrug of
matted hair, his cap back to the front. With a wand he beats time
slowly. Kitty Ricketts, a bony pallid whore in navy costume,

2050

doeskin gloves rolled back from a coral wristlet, a chain purse in her
hand, sits perched on the edge of the table swinging her leg and
glancing at herself in the gilt mirror over the mantelpiece. A tag of
her corsetlace hangs slightly below her jacket Lynch indicates
mockingly the couple at the piano.)

KITTY

(coughs behind her hand) She's a bit imbecillic. (she signs with
a waggling
forefinger) Blemblem. (Lynch lifts up her skirt and white petticoat with
his
wand She settles them down quickly.) Respect yourself. (she hiccups, then
bends quickly her sailor hat under which her hair glows, red with henna)

2060

O, excuse!

ZOE

More limelight, Charley. (she goes to the chandelier and turns the
gas full
cock)

KITTY

(peers at the gasjet) What ails it tonight?

LYNCH

(deeply) Enter a ghost and hobgoblins.

ZOE

Clap on the back for Zoe.

2070

(The wand in Lynch's hand flashes: a brass poker. Stephen stands
at the pianola on which sprawl his hat and ashplant. With two
fingers he repeats once more the series of empty fifths. Florry
Talbot, a blond feeble goosefat whore in a tatterdemalion gown of
mildewed strawberry, lolls spreadeagle in the sofacorner, her limp
forearm pendent over the bolster, listening. A heavy stye droops
over her sleepy eyelid.)

KITTY

(hiccups again with a kick of her horsed foot) O, excuse!

ZOE

2080

(promptly) Your boy's thinking of you. Tie a knot on your shift.

(Kitty Ricketts bends her head. Her boa uncoils, slides, glides over
her shoulder, back, arm, chair to the ground. Lynch lifts the curled
caterpillar on his wand. She snakes her neck, nestling. Stephen
glances behind at the squatted figure with its cap back to the front.)

STEPHEN

As a matter of fact it is of no importance whether Benedetto Marcello
found
it or made it. The rite is the poet's rest. It may be an old hymn to Demeter
or also illustrate Coela enarrant gloriam Domini. It is susceptible
of nodes
or modes as far apart as hyperphrygian and mixolydian and of texts so

2090

divergent as priests haihooping round David's that is Circe's or what am
I
saying Ceres' altar and David's tip from the stable to his chief bassoonist
about the alrightness of his almightiness. Mais nom de nom, that
is another
pair of trousers. Jetez la gourme. Faut que jeunesse se passe. (he stops,
points
at Lynch's cap, smiles, laughs) Which side is your knowledge bump?

THE CAP

(with saturnine spleen) Ba! It is because it is. Woman's reason.
Jewgreek is
greekjew. Extremes meet. Death is the highest form of life. Ba!

STEPHEN

You remember fairly accurately all my errors, boasts, mistakes. How
long

2100

shall I continue to close my eyes to disloyalty? Whetstone!

THE CAP

Ba!

STEPHEN

Here's another for you. (he frowns) The reason is because the
fundamental and the dominant are separated by the greatest possible
interval which ....

(abruptly) What went forth to the ends of the world to traverse
not itself,
God, the sun, Shakespeare, a commercial traveller, having itself traversed
in
reality itself becomes that self. Wait a moment. Wait a second. Damn that
fellow's noise in the street. Self which it itself was ineluctably

2120

preconditioned to become. Ecco!

LYNCH

(with a mocking whinny of laughter grins at Bloom and Zoe Higgins)What a learned speech, eh?

ZOE

(briskly) God help your head, he knows more than you have forgotten.

(With obese stupidity Florry Talbot regards Stephen.)

FLORRY

They say the last day is coming this summer.

KITTY

2130

No!

ZOE

(explodes in laughter) Great unjust God!

FLORRY

(offended) Well, it was in the papers about Antichrist. O, my
foot's
tickling.

Stop press edition. Result of the rockinghorse races. Sea serpent in
the

2140

royal canal. Safe arrival of Antichrist.

(Stephen turns and sees Bloom.)

STEPHEN

A time, times and half a time.

(Reuben I Antichrist, wandering jew, a clutching hand open on his
spine, stumps forward. Across his loins is slung a pilgrim's wallet
from which protrude promissory notes and dishonoured bills. Aloft
over his shoulder he bears a long boatpole from the hook of which
the sodden huddled mass of his only son, saved from Liffey waters,
hangs from the slack of its breeches. A hobgoblin in the image of

(his jaws chattering, capers to and fro, goggling his eyes, squeaking,
kangaroohopping with outstretched clutching arms, then all at once thrusts
his lipless face through the fork of his thighs) Il vient! C'est moi! L'homme
qui rit! L'homme primigne! (he whirls round and round with dervish

(sinking into torpor, crossing herself secretly) The end of the
world!

(A female tepid effluvium leaks out from her. Nebulous obscurity
occupies space. Through the drifting fog without the gramophone
blares over coughs and feetshuffling.)

THE GRAMOPHONE

2170

Jerusalem!
Open your gates and sing
Hosanna ....

(A rocket rushes up the sky and bursts. A white star fills from it,
proclaiming the consummation of all things and second coming of
Elijah. Along an infinite invisible tightrope taut from zenith to nadir
the End of the World, a twoheaded octopus in gillie's kilts, busby
and tartan filibegs, whirls through the murk, head over heels, in the
form of the Three Legs of Man.)

(Over the possing drift and choking breathcoughs, Elijah's voice,
harsh as a corncrake's, jars on high. Perspiring in a loose lawn
surplice with funnel sleeves he is seen, vergerfaced, above a rostrum
about which the banner of old glory is draped. He thumps the
parapet.)

ELIJAH

No yapping, if you please, in this booth. Jake Crane, Creole Sue, Dove
Campbell, Abe Kirschner, do your coughing with your mouths shut. Say, I

2190

am operating all this trunk line. Boys, do it now. God's time is 12.25.
Tell
mother you'll be there. Rush your order and you play a slick ace. Join
on
right here. Book through to eternity junction, the nonstop run. Just one
word more. Are you a god or a doggone clod? If the second advent came to
Coney Island are we ready? Florry Christ, Stephen Christ, Zoe Christ,
Bloom Christ, Kitty Christ, Lynch Christ, it's up to you to sense that
cosmic
force. Have we cold feet about the cosmos? No. Be on the side of the
angels. Be a prism. You have that something within, the higher self. You
can
rub shoulders with a Jesus, a Gautama, an Ingersoll. Are you all in this
vibration? I say you are. You once nobble that, congregation, and a buck

2200

joyride to heaven becomes a back number. You got me? It's a lifebrightener,
sure. The hottest stuff ever was. It's the whole pie with jam in. It's
just the
cutest snappiest line out. It is immense, supersumptuous. It restores.
It
vibrates. I know and I am some vibrator. Joking apart and, getting down
to
bedrock, A. J. Christ Dowie and the harmonial philosophy, have you got
that? O. K. Seventyseven west sixtyninth street. Got me? That's it. You
call
me up by sunphone any old time. Bumboosers, save your stamps. (he
shouts) Now then our glory song. All join heartily in the singing.
Encore!
(he sings) Jeru ....

THE GRAMOPHONE

2210

(drowning his voice) Whorusalaminyourhighhohhhh... (the disc
rasps
gratingly against the needle)

THE THREE WHORES

(covering their ears, squawk) Ahhkkk!

ELIJAH

(in rolledup shirtsleeves, black in the face,shouts at the top of
his voice,his
arms uplifted) Big Brother up there, Mr President, you hear what I
done
just been saying to you. Certainly, I sort of believe strong in you, Mr

President. I certainly am thinking now Miss Higgins and Miss Ricketts got
religion way inside them. Certainly seems to me I don't never see no wusser

2220

scared female than the way you been, Miss Florry, just now as I done seed
you. Mr President, you come long and help me save our sisters dear. (he
winks at his audience) Our Mr President, he twig the whole lot and
he aint
saying nothing.

KITTY-KATE

I forgot myself. In a weak moment I erred and did what I did on
Constitution hill. I was confirmed by the bishop and enrolled in the brown
scapular. My mother's sister married a Montmorency. It was a working
plumber was my ruination when I was pure.

ZOE-FANNY

2230

I let him larrup it into me for the fun of it.

FLORRY-TERESA

It was in consequence of a portwine beverage on top of Hennessy's three
star. I was guilty with Whelan when he slipped into the bed.

STEPHEN

In the beginning was the word, in the end the world without end. Blessed
be
the eight beatitudes.

(He corantos by. Best enters in hairdresser's attire, shinily
laundered, his locks in curlpapers. He leads John Eglinton who
wears a mandarin's kimono of Nankeen yellow, lizardlettered, and
a high pagoda hat.)

2250

(smiling, lifts the hat and displays a shaven poll from the crown
of which
bristles a pigtail toupee tied with an orange topknot) I was just beautifying
him, don't you know. A thing of beauty, don't you know, Yeats says, or
I
mean, Keats says.

JOHN EGLINTON

(produces a greencapped dark lantern and flashes it towards a corner:
with
carping accent) Esthetics and cosmetics are for the boudoir. I am out
for
truth. Plain truth for a plain man. Tanderagee wants the facts and means
to
get them.

(In the cone of the searchlight behind the coalscuttle, ollave,

2260

holyeyed, the bearded figure of Mananaun MacLir broods, chin on
knees. He rises slowly. A cold seawind blows from his druid mouth.
About his head writhe eels and elvers. He is encrusted with weeds
and shells. His right hand holds a bicycle pump. His left hand
grasps a huge crayfish by its two talons.)

MANANAUN MACLIR

(with a voice of waves) Aum! Hek! Wal! Ak! Lub! Mor! Ma! White
yoghin of the gods. Occult pimander of Hermes Trismegistos. (with a
voice
of whistling seawind) Punarjanam patsypunjaub! I won't have my leg
pulled. It has been said by one: beware the left, the cult of Shakti. (with
a

2270

cry of stormbirds) Shakti Shiva, darkhidden Father! (He smites with
his
bicycle pump the crayfish in his left hand. On its cooperative dial glow
the
twelve signs of the zodiac. He wails with the vehemence of the ocean.)Aum! Baum! Pyjaum! I am the light of the homestead! I am the dreamery
creamery butter.

(her head perched aside in mock pride) Is that the way to hand
the pot to
a lady? (She stretches up to light the cigarette over the flame, twirling
it
slowly, showing the brown tufts of her armpits. Lynch with his poker lifts
boldly a side of her slip. Bare from her garters up her flesh appears under

2290

the sapphire a nixie's green. She puffs calmly at her cigarette.) Can
you see
the beautyspot of my behind?

LYNCH

I'm not looking

ZOE

(makes sheep's eyes) No? You wouldn't do a less thing. Would
you suck a
lemon?

(Squinting in mock shame she glances with sidelong meaning at
Bloom, then twists round towards him, pulling her slip free of the
poker. Blue fluid again flows over her flesh. Bloom stands, smiling

2300

desirously, twirling his thumbs. Kitty Ricketts licks her middle
finger with her spittle and, gazing in the mirror, smooths both
eyebrows. Lipoti Virag, basilicogrammate, chutes rapidly down
through the chimneyflue and struts two steps to the left on gawky
pink stilts. He is sausaged into several overcoats and wears a brown
macintosh under which he holds a roll of parchment. In his left eye
flashes the monocle of Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall
Farrell. On his head is perched an Egyptian pshent Two quills
project over his ears.)

VIRAG

2310

(heels together, bows) My name is Virag Lipoti, of Szombathely.
(he
coughs thoughtfully, drily) Promiscuous nakedness is much in evidence
hereabouts, eh? Inadvertently her backview revealed the fact that she is
not
wearing those rather intimate garments of which you are a particular
devotee. The injection mark on the thigh I hope you perceived? Good.

BLOOM

Granpapachi. But .....

VIRAG

Number two on the other hand, she of the cherry rouge and coiffeuse
white,
whose hair owes not a little to our tribal elixir of gopherwood, is in
walking

2320

costume and tightly staysed by her sit, I should opine. Backbone in front,
so
to say. Correct me but I always understood that the act so performed by
skittish humans with glimpses of lingerie appealed to you in virtue of
its
exhibitionististicicity. In a word. Hippogriff. Am I right?

BLOOM

She is rather lean.

VIRAG

(not unpleasantly) Absolutely! Well observed and those pannier
pockets of
the skirt and slightly pegtop effect are devised to suggest bunchiness
of hip.
A new purchase at some monster sale for which a gull has been mulcted.

2330

Meretricious finery to deceive the eye. Observe the attention to details
of
dustspecks. Never put on you tomorrow what you can wear today.
Parallax! (with a nervous twitch of his head) Did you hear my brain
go
snap? Pollysyllabax!

BLOOM

(an elbow resting in a hand, a forefinger against his cheek)
She seems sad.

VIRAG

(cynically, his weasel teeth bared yellow, draws down his left eye
with a
finger and barks hoarsely) Hoax! Beware of the flapper and bogus
mournful. Lily of the alley. All possess bachelor's button discovered by

2340

Rualdus Columbus. Tumble her. Columble her. Chameleon. (more
genially) Well then, permit me to draw your attention to item number
three.
There is plenty of her visible to the naked eye. Observe the mass of
oxygenated vegetable matter on her skull. What ho, she bumps! The ugly
duckling of the party, longcasted and deep in keel.

BLOOM

(regretfully) When you come out without your gun.

VIRAG

We can do you all brands, mild, medium and strong. Pay your money, take
your choice. How happy could you be with either...

2350

BLOOM

With ...?

VIRAG

(his tongue upcurling) Lyum! Look. Her beam is broad. She is
coated with
quite a considerable layer of fat. Obviously mammal in weight of bosom
you remark that she has in front well to the fore two protuberances of
very
respectable dimensions, inclined to fall in the noonday soupplate, while
on
her rere lower down are two additional protuberances, suggestive of potent
rectum and tumescent for palpation, which leave nothing to be desired save
compactness. Such fleshy parts are the product of careful nurture. When

2360

coopfattened their livers reach an elephantine size. Pellets of new bread
with fennygreek and gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green tea
endow them during their brief existence with natural pincushions of quite

(arches his eyebrows) Contact with a goldring, they say. Argumentum
ad

2370

feminam, as we said in old Rome and ancient Greece in the consulship
of
Diplodocus and Ichthyosauros. For the rest Eve's sovereign remedy. Not
for sale. Hire only. Huguenot. (he twitches) It is a funny sound.
(he
coughs encouragingly) But possibly it is only a wart. I presume you
shall
have remembered what I will have taught you on that head? Wheatenmeal
with honey and nutmeg.

BLOOM

(reflecting) Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax. This searching
ordeal. It has been an unusually fatiguing day, a chapter of accidents.
Wait.
I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, you said ...

2380

VIRAG

(severely, his nose hardhumped, his side eye winking) Stop twirling
your
thumbs and have a good old thunk. See, you have forgotten. Exercise your
mnemotechnic. La causa santa. Tara. Tara. (aside) He will
surely
remember.

BLOOM

Rosemary also did I understand you to say or willpower over parasitic
tissues. Then nay no I have an inkling. The touch of a deadhand cures.
Mnemo?

VIRAG

2390

(excitedly) I say so. I say so. E'en so. Technic. (he taps
his parchmentroll
energetically) This book tells you how to act with all descriptive
particulars. Consult index for agitated fear of aconite, melancholy of
muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. Virag is going to talk about amputation.
Our
old friend caustic. They must be starved. Snip off with horsehair under
the
denned neck. But, to change the venue to the Bulgar and the Basque, have
you made up your mind whether you like or dislike women in male
habiliments? (with a dry snigger) You intended to devote an entire
year to
the study of the religious problem and the summer months of 1886 to
square the circle and win that million. Pomegranate! From the sublime to

2400

the ridiculous is but a step. Pyjamas, let us say? Or stockingette gussetted
knickers, closed? Or, put we the case, those complicated combinations,
camiknickers? (he crows derisively) Keekeereekee!

(Bloom surveys uncertainly the three whores then gazes at the
veiled mauve light, hearing the everflying moth.)BLOOM

I wanted then to have now concluded. Nightdress was never. Hence this.
But tomorrow is a new day will be. Past was is today. What now is will
then
morrow as now was be past yester.

VIRAG

2410

(prompts in a pig's whisper) Insects of the day spend their brief
existence
in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the inferiorly pulchritudinous
fumale possessing extendified pudendal nerve in dorsal region. Pretty Poll!
(his yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally) They had a proverb in the
Carpathians in or about the year five thousand five hundred and fifty of
our
era. One tablespoonful of honey will attract friend Bruin more than half
a
dozen barrels of first choice malt vinegar. Bear's buzz bothers bees. But
of
this apart. At another time we may resume. We were very pleased, we
others. (he coughs and, bending his brow, rubs his nose thoughtfully
with a
scooping hand) You shall find that these night insects follow the light.
An

2420

illusion for remember their complex unadjustable eye. For all these knotty
points see the seventeenth book of my Fundamentals of Sexology or the
Love Passion which Doctor L. B. says is the book sensation of the year.
Some, to example, there are again whose movements are automatic.
Perceive. That is his appropriate sun. Nightbird nightsun nighttown. Chase
me, Charley! (he blows into Bloom's ear) Buzz!

BLOOM

Bee or bluebottle too other day butting shadow on wall dazed self then
me
wandered dazed down shirt good job I ....

VIRAG

2430

(his face impassive, laughs in a rich feminine key) Splendid!
Spanish fly in
his fly or mustard plaster on his dibble. (he gobbles gluttonously with
turkey wattles) Bubbly jock! Bubbly jock! Where are we? Open Sesame!
Cometh forth! (he unrolls his parchment rapidly and reads, his
glowworm's nose running backwards over the letters which he claws)
Stay,
good friend. I bring thee thy answer. Redbank oysters will shortly be upon
us. I'm the best o'cook. Those succulent bivalves may help us and the
truffles of Perigord, tubers dislodged through mister omnivorous porker,
were unsurpassed in cases of nervous debility or viragitis. Though they
stink yet they sting. (he wags his head with cackling raillery)
Jocular. With

2440

my eyeglass in my ocular. (he sneezes) Amen!

BLOOM

(absently) Ocularly woman's bivalve case is worse. Always open
sesame.
The cloven sex. Why they fear vermin, creeping things. Yet Eve and the
serpent contradicts. Not a historical fact. Obvious analogy to my idea.
Serpents too are gluttons for woman's milk. Wind their way through miles
of omnivorous forest to sucksucculent her breast dry. Like those
bubblyjocular Roman matrons one reads of in Elephantuliasis.

in outlandish monotone) That the cows with their those distended udders
that they have been the the known ....

BLOOM

I am going to scream. I beg your pardon. Ah? So. (he repeats)
Spontaneously to seek out the saurian's lair in order to entrust their
teats to
his avid suction. Ant milks aphis. (profoundly) Instinct rules the
world. In
life. In death.

VIRAG

(head askew, arches his back and hunched wingshoulders, peers at
the
moth out of blear bulged eyes, points a horning claw and cries) Who's

2460

moth moth? Who's dear Gerald? Dear Ger, that you? O dear, he is Gerald.
O, I much fear he shall be most badly burned. Will some pleashe pershon
not now impediment so catastrophics mit agitation of firstclass
tablenumpkin? (he mews) Puss puss puss puss! (he sighs, draws
back and
stares sideways down with dropping underjaw) Well, well. He doth rest
anon. (he snaps his jaws suddenly on the air)

THE MOTH

I'm a tiny tiny thing
Ever flying in the spring
Round and round a ringaring.

2470

Long ago I was a king
Now I do this kind of thing
On the wing, on the wing!
Bing!

(he rushes against the mauve shade, flapping noisily)

Pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty petticoats.

(From left upper entrance with two gliding steps Henry Flower
comes forward to left front centre. He wears a dark mantle and
drooping plumed sombrero. He carries a silverstringed inlaid

dulcimer and a longstemmed bamboo Jacob's pipe, its clay bowl

2480

fashioned as a female head. He wears dark velvet hose and
silverbuckled pumps. He has the romantic Saviour's face with
flowing locks, thin beard and moustache. His spindlelegs and
sparrow feet are those of the tenor Mario, prince of Candia. He
settles down his goffered ruffs and moistens his lips with a passage
of his amorous tongue.)

HENRY

(in a low dulcet voice, touching the strings of his guitar) There
is a flower
that bloometh.

(to himself) Play with your eyes shut. Imitate pa. Filling my
belly with
husks of swine. Too much of this. I will arise and go to my. Expect this
is
the. Steve, thou art in a parlous way. Must visit old Deasy or telegraph.
Our
interview of this morning has left on me a deep impression. Though our
ages. Will write fully tomorrow. I'm partially drunk, by the way. (he
touches the keys again) Minor chord comes now. Yes. Not much however.

(Almidano Artifoni holds out a batonroll of music with vigorous

2500

moustachework.)

ARTIFONI

Ci rifletta. Lei rovina tutto.

FLORRY

Sing us something. Love's old sweet song.

STEPHEN

No voice. I am a most finished artist. Lynch, did I show you the letter
about
the lute?

FLORRY

(smirking) The bird that can sing and won't sing.

2510

(The Siamese twins, Philip Drunk and Philip Sober, two Oxford
dons with lawnmowers, appear in the window embrasure. Both are
masked with Matthew Arnold's face.)

PHILIP SOBER

Take a fool's advice. All is not well. Work it out with the buttend
of a pencil,
like a good young idiot. Three pounds twelve you got, two notes, one
sovereign, two crowns, if youth but knew. Mooney's en ville, Mooney's sur
mer, the Moira, Larchet's, Holles street hospital, Burke's. Eh? I am
watching you.

PHILIP DRUNK

2520

(impatiently) Ah, bosh, man. Go to hell! I paid my way. If I
could only
find out about octaves. Reduplication of personality. Who was it told me
his
name? (his lawnmower begins to purr) Aha, yes. Zoe mou sas agapo.
Have
a notion I was here before. When was it not Atkinson his card I have
somewhere. Mac Somebody. Unmack I have it. He told me about, hold on,
Swinburne, was it, no?

FLORRY

And the song?

STEPHEN

Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.

2530

FLORRY

Are you out of Maynooth? You're like someone I knew once.

STEPHEN

Out of it now. (to himself) Clever.

PHILIP DRUNK AND PHILIP SOBER

(their lawnmowers purring with a rigadoon of grasshalms) Clever
ever.
Out of it out of it. By the bye have you the book, the thing, the ashplant?
Yes, there it, yes. Cleverever outofitnow. Keep in condition. Do like us.

ZOE

There was a priest down here two nights ago to do his bit of business
with

2540

his coat buttoned up. You needn't try to hide, I says to him. I know you've
a
Roman collar.

VIRAG

Perfectly logical from his standpoint. Fall of man. (harshly, his
pupils
waxing) To hell with the pope! Nothing new under the sun. I am the
Virag
who disclosed the Sex Secrets of Monks and Maidens. Why I left the church
of Rome. Read the Priest, the Woman and the Confessional. Penrose.
Flipperty Jippert. (he wriggles) Woman, undoing with sweet pudor
her belt

of rushrope, offers her allmoist yoni to man's lingam. Short time after
man
presents woman with pieces of jungle meat. Woman shows joy and covers
herself with featherskins. Man loves her yoni fiercely with big lingam,
the

I hope you gave the good father a penance. Nine glorias for shooting
a
bishop.

ZOE

(spouts walrus smoke through her nostrils) He couldn't get a
connection.
Only, you know, sensation. A dry rush.

2560

BLOOM

Poor man!

ZOE

(lightly) Only for what happened him.

BLOOM

How?

VIRAG

(A diabolic rictus of black luminosity contracting his visage, cranes
his
scraggy neck forward. He lifts a mooncalf nozzle and howls.) Verfluchte
Goim! He had a father, forty fathers. He never existed. Pig God! He
had

2570

two left feet. He was Judas Iacchia, a Libyan eunuch, the pope's bastard.
(he leans out on tortured forepaws, elbows bent rigid, his eye agonising
in
his flat skullneck and yelps over the mute world) A son of a whore.
Apocalypse.

KITTY

And Mary Shortall that was in the lock with the pox she got from Jimmy
Pidgeon in the blue caps had a child off him that couldn't swallow and
was
smothered with the convulsions in the mattress and we all subscribed for
the funeral.

PHILIP DRUNK

2580

(gravely) Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position, Philippe?

PHILIP SOBER

(gaily) C'etait le sacr pigeon, Philippe.

(Kitty unpins her hat and sets it down calmly, patting her henna
hair. And a prettier, a daintier head of winsome curls was never seen
on a whore's shoulders. Lynch puts on her hat. She whips it off.)

LYNCH

(laughs) And to such delights has Metchnikoff inoculated anthropoid
apes.

FLORRY

(nods) Locomotor ataxy.

2590

ZOE

(gaily) O, my dictionary.

LYNCH

Three wise virgins.

VIRAG

(agueshaken, profuse yellow spawn foaming over his bony epileptic
lips)She sold lovephiltres, whitewax, orangeflower. Panther, the Roman
centurion, polluted her with his genitories. (he sticks out a flickering
phosphorescent scorpion tongue, his hand on his fork) Messiah! He burst
her tympanum. (with gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the

(The virgins Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley burst through the
ringkeepers and the ropes and mob him with open arms.)

2610

THE VIRGINS

(gushingly) Big Ben! Ben my Chree!

A VOICE

Hold that fellow with the bad breeches.

BEN DOLLARD

(smites his thigh in abundant laughter) Hold him now.

HENRY

(caressing on his breast a severed female head, murmurs) Thine
heart,
mine love. (he plucks his lutestrings) When first I saw ...

VIRAG

2620

(sloughing his skins, his multitudinous plumage moulting) Rats!
(he
yawns, showing a coalblack throat, and closes his jaws by an upward push
of his parchmentroll) After having said which I took my departure.
Farewell. Fare thee well. Dreck!

(Henry Flower combs his moustache and beard rapidly with a
pocketcomb and gives a cow's lick to his hair. Steered by his rapier,
he glides to the door, his wild harp slung behind him. Virag reaches
the door in two ungainly stilthops, his tail cocked, and deftly claps
sideways on the wall a pusyellow flybill, butting it with his head.)

THE FLYBILL

2630

K. II. Post No Bills. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy Franks.

HENRY

All is lost now.

(Virag unscrews his head in a trice and holds it under his arm.)

VIRAG'S HEAD

Quack!

(Exeunt severally.)

STEPHEN

(over his shoulder to Zoe) You would have preferred the fighting
parson
who founded the protestant error. But beware Antisthenes, the dog sage,

2640

and the last end of Arius Heresiarchus. The agony in the closet.

LYNCH

All one and the same God to her.

STEPHEN

(devoutly) And sovereign Lord of all things.

FLORRY

(to Stephen) I'm sure you're a spoiled priest. Or a monk.

LYNCH

He is. A cardinal's son.

STEPHEN

2650

Cardinal sin. Monks of the screw.

(His Eminence Simon Stephen cardinal Dedalus, primate of all
Ireland, appears in the doorway, dressed in red soutane, sandals
and socks Seven dwarf simian acolytes, also in red, cardinal sins,
uphold his train, peeping under it He wears a battered silk hat
sideways on his head. His thumbs are stuck in his armpits and his
palms outspread. Round his neck hangs a rosary of corks ending on
his breast in a corkscrew cross. Releasing his thumbs, he invokes
grace from on high with large wave gestures and proclaims with
bloated pomp:)

2660

THE CARDINAL

Conservio lies captured
He lies in the lowest dungeon
With manacles and chains around his limbs
Weighing upwards of three tons.

(He looks at all for a moment, his right eye closed tight, his left
cheek puffed out Then, unable to repress his merriment, he rocks to
and fro, arms akimbo, and sings with broad rollicking humour:)

O, the poor little fellow
Hihihihihis legs they were yellow

2670

He was plump, fat and heavy and brisk as a snake
But some bloody savage
To graize his white cabbage
He murdered Nell Flaherty's duckloving drake.

(A multitude of midges swarms white over his robe. He scratches
himself with crossed arms at his ribs, grimacing, and exclaims:)

I'm suffering the agony of the damned. By the hoky fiddle, thanks be
to
Jesus those funny little chaps are not unanimous. If they were they'd walk
me off the face of the bloody globe.

(His head aslant he blesses curtly with fore and middle fingers,

2680

imparts the Easter kiss and doubleshuffles off comically, swaying his
hat from side to side, shrinking quickly to the size of his
trainbearers.The dwarf acolytes, giggling, peeping, nudging, ogling,
easterkissing, zigzag behind him. His voice is heard mellow from
afar, merciful male, melodious:)

(A male form passes down the creaking staircase and is heard
taking the waterproof and hat from the rack. Bloom starts forward
involuntarily and, half closing the door as he passes, takes the
chocolate from his pocket and offers it nervously to Zoe.)

(hearing a male voice in talk with the whores on the doorstep, pricks
his
ears)

If it were he? After? Or because not? Or the double event?

ZOE

(tears open the silverfoil) Fingers was made before forks. (she
breaks off
and nibbles a piece gives a piece to Kitty Ricketts and then turns kittenishly
to Lynch) No objection to French lozenges? (He nods. She taunts
him.)
Have it now or wait till you get it? (He opens his mouth, his head cocked.
She whirls the prize in left circle. His head follows. She whirls it back
in

2710

right circle. He eyes her.) Catch!

(She tosses a piece. With an adroit snap he catches it and bites
it
through with a crack.)

KITTY

(chewing) The engineer I was with at the bazaar does have lovely
ones.
Full of the best liqueurs. And the viceroy was there with his lady. The
gas
we had on the Toft's hobbyhorses. I'm giddy still.

door. Then rigid with left foot advanced he makes a swift pass with
impelling fingers and gives the sign of past master, drawing his right
arm
downwards from his left shoulder.) Go, go, go, I conjure you, whoever
you
are!

(A male cough and tread are heard passing through the mist
outside. Bloom's features relax. He places a hand in his waistcoat,
posing calmly. Zoe offers him chocolate.)

BLOOM

(solemnly) Thanks.

ZOE

2730

Do as you're bid. Here!

(A firm heelclacking tread is heard on the stairs.)

BLOOM

(takes the chocolate) Aphrodisiac? Tansy and pennyroyal. But
I bought it.
Vanilla calms or? Mnemo. Confused light confuses memory. Red influences
lupus. Colours affect women's characters, any they have. This black makes
me sad. Eat and be merry for tomorrow. (he eats) Influence taste
too,
mauve. But it is so long since I. Seems new. Aphro. That priest. Must come.
Better late than never. Try truffles at Andrews.

(The door opens. Bella Cohen, a massive whoremistress, enters. She

2740

is dressed in a threequarter ivory gown, fringed round the hem with
tasselled selvedge, and cools herself flirting a black horn fan like
Minnie Hauck in Carmen. On her left hand are wedding and
keeper rings. Her eyes are deeply carboned. She has a sprouting
moustache. Her olive face is heavy, slightly sweated and fullnosed
with orangetainted nostrils. She has large pendant beryl eardrops.)

BELLA

My word! I'm all of a mucksweat.

(She glances round her at the couples Then her eyes rest on Bloom
with hard insistence. Her large fan winnows wind towards her

2750

heated faceneck and embonpoint. Her falcon eyes glitter.)

THE FAN

(flirting quickly, then slowly) Married, I see.

BLOOM

Yes. Partly, I have mislaid.....

THE FAN

(half opening, then closing) And the missus is master. Petticoat
government.

BLOOM

(looks down with a sheepish grin) That is so.

2760

THE FAN

(folding together, rests against her left eardrop) Have you forgotten
me?

BLOOM

Nes. Yo.

THE FAN

(folded akimbo against her waist) Is me her was you dreamed before?
Was
then she him you us since knew? Am all them and the same now me?

(Bella approaches, gently tapping with the fan.)

BLOOM

(wincing) Powerful being. In my eyes read that slumber which
women

2770

love.

THE FAN

(tapping) We have met. You are mine. It is fate.

BLOOM

(cowed) Exuberant female. Enormously I desiderate your domination.
I
am exhausted, abandoned, no more young. I stand, so to speak, with an
unposted letter bearing the extra regulation fee before the too late box
of the
general postoffice of human life. The door and window open at a right

angle cause a draught of thirtytwo feet per second according to the law
of
falling bodies. I have felt this instant a twinge of sciatica in my left
glutear

2780

muscle. It runs in our family. Poor dear papa, a widower, was a regular
barometer from it. He believed in animal heat. A skin of tabby lined his
winter waistcoat. Near the end, remembering king David and the Sunamite,
he shared his bed with Athos, faithful after death. A dog's spittle as
you
probably.... (he winces) Ah!

RICHIE GOULDING

(bagweighted, passes the door) Mocking is catch. Best value in
Dub. Fit for
a prince's. Liver and kidney.

THE FAN

(tapping) All things end. Be mine. Now,

2790

BLOOM

(undecided) All now? I should not have parted with my talisman.
Rain,
exposure at dewfall on the searocks, a peccadillo at my time of life. Every
phenomenon has a natural cause.

THE FAN

(points downwards slowly) You may.

BLOOM

(looks downwards and perceives her unfastened bootlace) We are
observed.

THE FAN

2800

(points downwards quickly) You must.

BLOOM

(with desire, with reluctance) I can make a true black knot.
Learned when
I served my time and worked the mail order line for Kellett's. Experienced
hand. Every knot says a lot. Let me. In courtesy. I knelt once before today.

(Bella raises her gown slightly and, steadying her pose, lifts to
the
edge of a chair a plump buskined hoof and a full pastern,
silksocked. Bloom, stifflegged, aging, bends over her hoof and with
gentle fingers draws out and in her laces.)

BLOOM

2810

(murmurs lovingly) To be a shoefitter in Manfield's was my love's
young
dream, the darling joys of sweet buttonhooking, to lace up crisscrossed
to
kneelength the dressy kid footwear satinlined, so incredibly impossibly
small, of Clyde Road ladies. Even their wax model Raymonde I visited daily
to admire her cobweb hose and stick of rhubarb toe, as worn in Paris.

THE HOOF

Smell my hot goathide. Feel my royal weight.

BLOOM

(crosslacing) Too tight?

THE HOOF

2820

If you bungle, Handy Andy, I'll kick your football for you.

BLOOM

Not to lace the wrong eyelet as I did the night of the bazaar dance.
Bad
luck. Hook in wrong tache of her .... person you mentioned. That night
she
met.... Now!

(He knots the lace. Bella places her foot on the floor. Bloom raises
his head. Her heavy face, her eyes strike him in midbrow. His eyes
grow dull, darker and pouched, his nose thickens.)

BLOOM

(mumbles) Awaiting your further orders we remain, gentlemen,
....

2830

BELLO

(with a hard basilisk stare, in a baritone voice) Hound of dishonour!

BLOOM

(infatuated) Empress!

BELLO

(his heavy cheekchops sagging) Adorer of the adulterous rump!

BLOOM

(plaintively) Hugeness!

BELLO

Dungdevourer!

2840

BLOOM

(with sinews semiflexed) Magmagnificence!

BELLO

Down! (he taps her on the shoulder with his fan) Incline feet
forward!
Slide left foot one pace back! You will fall. You are falling. On the hands
down!

(laughs loudly) Holy smoke! You little know what's in store for
you. I'm
the Tartar to settle your little lot and break you in! I'll bet Kentucky
cocktails all round I shame it out of you, old son. Cheek me, I dare you.
If
you do tremble in anticipation of heel discipline to be inflicted in gym
costume.

(Bloom creeps under the sofa and peers out through the fringe.)

ZOE

(widening her slip to screen her) She's not here.

BLOOM

2870

(closing her eyes) She's not here.

FLORRY

(hiding her with her gown) She didn't mean it, Mr Bello. She'll
be good,
sir.

KITTY

Don't be too hard on her, Mr Bello. Sure you won't, ma'amsir.

BELLO

(coaxingly) Come, ducky dear, I want a word with you, darling,
just to
administer correction. Just a little heart to heart talk, sweety. (Bloom
puts
out her timid head) There's a good girly now. (Bello grabs her hair

2880

violently and drags her forward) I only want to correct you for your
own
good on a soft safe spot. How's that tender behind? O, ever so gently,
pet.
Begin to get ready.

BLOOM

(fainting) Don't tear my ...

BELLO

(savagely) The nosering, the pliers, the bastinado, the hanging
hook, the
knout I'll make you kiss while the flutes play like the Nubian slave of
old.
You're in for it this time! I'll make you remember me for the balance of
your natural life. (his forehead veins swollen, his face congested)
I shall sit

2890

on your ottoman saddleback every morning after my thumping good
breakfast of Matterson's fat hamrashers and a bottle of Guinness's porter.
(he belches) And suck my thumping good Stock Exchange cigar while
I
read the Licensed Victualler's Gazette. Very possibly I shall have
you
slaughtered and skewered in my stables and enjoy a slice of you with crisp
crackling from the baking tin basted and baked like sucking pig with rice
and lemon or currant sauce. It will hurt you. (He twists her arm. Bloom
squeals, turning turtle.)

BLOOM

Don't be cruel, nurse! Don't!

2900

BELLO

(twisting) Another!

BLOOM

(screams) O, it's hell itself! Every nerve in my body aches like
mad!

BELLO

(shouts) Good, by the rumping jumping general! That's the best
bit of
news I heard these six weeks. Here, don't keep me waiting, damn you! (he
slaps her face)

BLOOM

(whimpers) You're after hitting me. I'll tell ....

2910

BELLO

Hold him down, girls, till I squat on him.

ZOE

Yes. Walk on him! I will.

FLORRY

I will. Don't be greedy.

KITTY

No, me. Lend him to me.

(The brothel cook, Mrs Keogh, wrinkled, greybearded, in a greasy
bib, men's grey and green socks and brogues, floursmeared, a

2920

rollingpin stuck with raw pastry in her bare red arm and hand,
appears at the door.)

MRS KEOGH

(ferociously) Can I help?

(They hold and pinion Bloom.)

BELLO

(squats with a grunt on Bloom's upturned face, puffing cigarsmoke,
nursing a fat leg) I see Keating Clay is elected vicechairman of the
Richmond asylum and by the by Guinness's preference shares are at sixteen
three quaffers. Curse me for a fool that didn't buy that lot Craig and

Ask for that every ten minutes. Beg. Pray for it as you never prayed
before.
(he thrusts out a figged fist and foul cigar) Here, kiss that. Both.
Kiss. (he
throws a leg astride and, pressing with horseman's knees, calls in a hard
voice) Gee up! A cockhorse to Banbury cross. I'll ride him for the
Eclipse

2940

stakes. (he bends sideways and squeezes his mount's testicles roughly,
shouting) Ho! Off we pop! I'll nurse you in proper fashion. (he
horserides
cockhorse, leaping in the, in the saddle) The lady goes a pace a pace
and
the coachman goes a trot a trot and the gentleman goes a gallop a gallop
a
gallop a gallop.

FLORRY

(pulls at Bello) Let me on him now. You had enough. I asked before
you.

ZOE

(pulling at Florry) Me. Me. Are you not finished with him yet,
suckeress?

(stands up) No more blow hot and cold. What you longed for has
come to

2960

pass. Henceforth you are unmanned and mine in earnest, a thing under the
yoke. Now for your punishment frock. You will shed your male garments,
you understand, Ruby Cohen? and don the shot silk luxuriously rustling
over head and shoulders. And quickly too!

(points to his whores) As they are now so will you be, wigged,
singed,
perfumesprayed, ricepowdered, with smoothshaven armpits. Tape

2970

measurements will be taken next your skin. You will be laced with cruel
force into vicelike corsets of soft dove coutille with whalebone busk to
the
diamondtrimmed pelvis, the absolute outside edge, while your figure,
plumper than when at large, will be restrained in nettight frocks, pretty
two
ounce petticoats and fringes and things stamped, of course, with my
houseflag, creations of lovely lingerie for Alice and nice scent for Alice.
Alice will feel the pullpull.Martha and Mary will be a little chilly at
first in
such delicate thighcasing but the frilly flimsiness of lace round your
bare
knees will remind you .....

BLOOM

2980

(charming soubrette with dauby cheeks, mustard hair and large male
hands and nose, leering mouth) I tried her things on only twice, a
small
prank, in Holles street. When we were hard up I washed them to save the
laundry bill. My own shirts I turned. It was the purest thrift.

BELLO

(jeers) Little jobs that make mother pleased, eh? And showed
off
coquettishly in your domino at the mirror behind closedrawn blinds your
unskirted thighs and hegoat's udders in various poses of surrender, eh?
Ho! ho! I have to laugh! That secondhand black operatop shift and short
trunkleg naughties all split up the stitches at her last rape that Mrs
Miriam

2990

Dandrade sold you from the Shelbourne hotel, eh?

BLOOM

Miriam. Black. Demimondaine.

BELLO

(guffaws) Christ Almighty it's too tickling, this! You were a
nicelooking
Miriam when you clipped off your backgate hairs and lay swooning in the
thing across the bed as Mrs Dandrade about to be violated by lieutenant
Smythe-Smythe, Mr Philip Augustus Blockwell M. P., signor Laci Daremo,
the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the liftboy, Henri Fleury of Gordon
Bennett fame, Sheridan, the quadroon Croesus, the varsity wetbob eight

3000

from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager
duchess of Manorhamilton. (he guffaws again) Christ, wouldn't it
make a
Siamese cat laugh?

BLOOM

(her hands and features working) It was Gerald converted me to
be a true
corsetlover when I was female impersonator in the High School play Vice
Versa. It was dear Gerald. He got that kink, fascinated by sister's stays.
Now dearest Gerald uses pinky greasepaint and gilds his eyelids. Cult of
the beautiful.

BELLO

3010

(with wicked glee) Beautiful! Give us a breather! When you took
your seat
with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on the smoothworn
throne.

BLOOM

Science. To compare the various joys we each enjoy. (earnestly)
And really
it's better the position .... because often I used to wet ....

BELLO

(sternly) No insubordination! The sawdust is there in the corner
for you. I
gave you strict instructions, didn't I? Do it standing, sir! I'll teach
you to
behave like a jinkleman! If I catch a trace on your swaddles. Aha! By the

3020

ass of the Dorans you'll find I'm a martinet. The sins of your past are
rising
against you. Many. Hundreds.

THE SINS OF THE PAST

(in a medley of voices) He went through a form of clandestine
marriage
with at least one woman in the shadow of the Black church. Unspeakable
messages he telephoned mentally to Miss Dunn at an address in D'Olier
street while he presented himself indecently to the instrument in the callbox.
By word and deed he frankly encouraged a nocturnal strumpet to deposit
fecal and other matter in an unsanitary outhouse attached to empty
premises. In five public conveniences he wrote pencilled messages offering

3030

his nuptial partner to all strongmembered males. And by the offensively
smelling vitriol works did he not pass night after night by loving courting
couples to see if and what and how much he could see? Did he not lie in
bed, the gross boar, gloating over a nauseous fragment of wellused toilet
paper presented to him by a nasty harlot, stimulated by gingerbread and
a
postal order?

BELLO

(whistles loudly) Say! What was the most revolting piece of obscenity
in all
your career of crime? Go the whole hog. Puke it out! Be candid for once.

(Mute inhuman faces throng forward, leering, vanishing, gibbering,

3040

Booloohoom, Poldy Kock, Bootlaces a penny Cassidy's hag, blind

stripling, Larry rhinoceros, the girl, the woman, the whore, the
other the, lane the.)

BLOOM

Don't ask me! Our mutual faith. Pleasants street. I only thought the
half of
the ... I swear on my sacred oath ....

BELLO

(peremptorily) Answer. Repugnant wretch! I insist on knowing.
Tell me
something to amuse me, smut or a bloody good ghoststory or a line of
poetry, quick, quick, quick! Where? How? What time? With how many? I

(satirically) By day you will souse and bat our smelling underclothes
also
when we ladies are unwell, and swab out our latrines with dress pinned
up
and a dishclout tied to your tail. Won't that be nice? (he places a
ruby ring
on her finger) And there now! With this ring I thee own. Say, thank
you,
mistress.

BLOOM

Thank you, mistress.

BELLO

You will make the beds, get my tub ready, empty the pisspots in the
different
rooms, including old Mrs Keogh's the cook's, a sandy one. Ay, and rinse

3070

the seven of them well, mind, or lap it up like champagne. Drink me piping
hot. Hop! You will dance attendance or I'll lecture you on your misdeeds,
Miss Ruby, and spank your bare bot right well, miss, with the hairbrush.
You'll be taught the error of your ways. At night your wellcreamed
braceletted hands will wear fortythreebutton gloves newpowdered with talc
and having delicately scented fingertips. For such favours knights of old

laid down their lives. (he chuckles) My boys will be no end charmed
to see
you so ladylike, the colonel, above all, when they come here the night
before
the wedding to fondle my new attraction in gilded heels. First I'll have
a go
at you myself. A man I know on the turf named Charles Alberta Marsh (I

3080

was in bed with him just now and another gentleman out of the Hanaper
and Petty Bag office) is on the lookout for a maid of all work at a short
knock. Swell the bust. Smile. Droop shoulders. What offers? (he points)
For that lot. Trained by owner to fetch and carry, basket in mouth. (he
bares his arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom's vulva) There's fine
depth for you! What, boys? That give you a hardon? (he shoves his arm
in
a bidder's face) Here wet the deck and wipe it round!

A BIDDER

A florin.

(Dillon's lacquey rings his handbell.)

3090

THE LACQUEY

Barang!

A VOICE

One and eightpence too much.

CHARLES ALBERTA MARSH

Must be virgin. Good breath. Clean.

BELLO

(gives a rap with his gavel) Two bar. Rockbottom figure and cheap
at the
price. Fourteen hands high. Touch and examine shis points. Handle hrim.
This downy skin, these soft muscles, this tender flesh. If I had only my
gold

3100

piercer here! And quite easy to milk. Three newlaid gallons a day. A pure
stockgetter, due to lay within the hour. His sire's milk record was a
thousand gallons of whole milk in forty weeks. Whoa my jewel! Beg up!
Whoa! (he brands his initial C on Bloom's croup) So! Warranted Cohen!
What advance on two bob, gentlemen?

A DARKVISAGED MAN

(in disguised accent) Hoondert punt sterlink.

VOICES

(subdued) For the Caliph. Haroun Al Raschid.

3110

BELLO

(gaily) Right. Let them all come. The scanty, daringly short
skirt, riding up
at the knee to show a peep of white pantalette, is a potent weapon and
transparent stockings, emeraldgartered, with the long straight seam trailing
up beyond the knee, appeal to the better instincts of the blase
man about
town. Learn the smooth mincing walk on four inch Louis Quinze heels, the
Grecian bend with provoking croup, the thighs fluescent, knees modestly
kissing. Bring all your powers of fascination to bear on them. Pander to
their Gomorrahan vices.

BLOOM

3120

(bends his blushing face into his armpit and simpers with forefinger
in
mouth) O, I know what you're hinting at now!

BELLO

What else are you good for, an impotent thing like you? (he stoops
and,
peering, pokes with his fan rudely under the fat suet folds of Bloom's
haunches) Up! Up! Manx cat! What have we here? Where's your curly
teapot gone to or who docked it on you, cockyolly? Sing, birdy, sing. It's
as
limp as a boy of six's doing his pooly behind a cart. Buy a bucket or sell
your pump. (loudly) Can you do a man's job?

BLOOM

3130

Eccles street....

BELLO

(sarcastically) I wouldn't hurt your feelings for the world but
there's a
man of brawn in possession there. The tables are turned, my gay young
fellow! He is something like a fullgrown outdoor man. Well for you, you
muff, if you had that weapon with knobs and lumps and warts all over it.
He shot his bolt, I can tell you! Foot to foot, knee to knee, belly to
belly,
bubs to breast! He's no eunuch. A shock of red hair he has sticking out
of
him behind like a furzebush! Wait for nine months, my lad! Holy ginger,
it's kicking and coughing up and down in her guts already! That makes

(ruthlessly) No, Leopold Bloom, all is changed by woman's will
since you

3150

slept horizontal in Sleepy Hollow your night of twenty years. Return and
see.

(Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the wold.)

SLEEPY HOLLOW

Rip van Wink! Rip van Winkle!

BLOOM

(in tattered mocassins with a rusty fowlingpiece, tiptoeing, fingertipping,
his haggard bony bearded face peering through the diamond panes, cries
out) I see her! It's she! The first night at Mat Dillon's! But that
dress, the
green! And her hair is dyed gold and he ....

(Milly Bloom, fairhaired, greenvested, slimsandalled, her blue scarf
in the seawind simply swirling, breaks from the arms of her lover
and calls, her young eyes wonderwide.)

MILLY

My! It's Papli! But, O Papli, how old you've grown!

BELLO

Changed, eh? Our whatnot, our writingtable where we never wrote, aunt
Hegarty's armchair, our classic reprints of old masters. A man and his

3170

menfriends are living there in clover. The Cuckoos' Rest! Why not? How
many women had you, eh, following them up dark streets, flatfoot, exciting
them by your smothered grunts, what, you male prostitute? Blameless
dames with parcels of groceries. Turn about. Sauce for the goose, my
gander O.

BLOOM

They.... I ....

BELLO

(cuttingly) Their heelmarks will stamp the Brusselette carpet
you bought at
Wren's auction. In their horseplay with Moll the romp to find the buck
flea

3180

in her breeches they will deface the little statue you carried home in
the rain
for art for art' sake. They will violate the secrets of your bottom drawer.
Pages will be torn from your handbook of astronomy to make them
pipespills. And they will spit in your ten shilling brass fender from
Hampton Leedom's.

BLOOM

Ten and six. The act of low scoundrels. Let me go. I will return. I
will
prove ...

A VOICE

Swear!

3190

(Bloom clenches his fists and crawls forward, a bowieknife between
his teeth.)

BELLO

As a paying guest or a kept man? Too late. You have made your secondbest
bed and others must lie in it. Your epitaph is written. You are down and
out
and don't you forget it, old bean.

BLOOM

Justice! All Ireland versus one! Has nobody ...? (he bites his thumb)

BELLO

Die and be damned to you if you have any sense of decency or grace about

3200

you. I can give you a rare old wine that'll send you skipping to hell and
back. Sign a will and leave us any coin you have! If you have none see
you
damn well get it, steal it, rob it! We'll bury you in our shrubbery jakes
where you'll be dead and dirty with old Cuck Cohen, my stepnephew I
married, the bloody old gouty procurator and sodomite with a crick in his
neck, and my other ten or eleven husbands, whatever the buggers' names
were, suffocated in the one cesspool. (he explodes in a loud phlegmy
laugh)
We'll manure you, Mr Flower! (he pipes scoffingly) Byby, Poldy!
Byby,
Papli!

BLOOM

3210

(clasps his head) My willpower! Memory! I have sinned! I have
suff.... (he
weeps tearlessly)

(From the suttee pyre the flame of gum camphire ascends. The pall
of incense smoke screens and disperses. Out of her oakframe a
nymph with hair unbound, lightly clad in teabrown artcolours,

3230

descends from her grotto and passing under interlacing yews stands
over Bloom.)

THE YEWS

(their leaves whispering) Sister. Our sister. Ssh!

THE NYMPH

(softly) Mortal! (kindly) Nay, dost not weepest!

BLOOM

(crawls jellily forward under the boughs, streaked by sunlight, with
dignity) This position. I felt it was expected of me. Force of habit.

THE NYMPH

3240

Mortal! You found me in evil company, highkickers, coster picnicmakers,
pugilists, popular generals, immoral panto boys in fleshtights and the
nifty
shimmy dancers, La Aurora and Karini, musical act, the hit of the century.
I was hidden in cheap pink paper that smelt of rock oil. I was surrounded

by the stale smut of clubmen, stories to disturb callow youth, ads for
transparencies, truedup dice and bustpads, proprietary articles and why
wear a truss with testimonial from ruptured gentleman. Useful hints to
the
married.

BLOOM

(lifts a turtle head towards her lap) We have met before. On
another star.

I do. You bore me away, framed me in oak and tinsel, set me above your
marriage couch. Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in four places.

3260

And with loving pencil you shaded my eyes, my bosom and my shame.

BLOOM

(humbly kisses her long hair) Your classic curves, beautiful
immortal, I
was glad to look on you, to praise you, a thing of beauty, almost to pray.

THE NYMPH

During dark nights I heard your praise.

BLOOM

(quickly) Yes, yes. You mean that I.... Sleep reveals the worst
side of
everyone, children perhaps excepted. I know I fell out of bed or rather
was
pushed. Steel wine is said to cure snoring. For the rest there is that
English

3270

invention, pamphlet of which I received some days ago, incorrectly
addressed. It claims to afford a noiseless, inoffensive vent. (he sighs)
'Twas
ever thus. Frailty, thy name is marriage.

THE NYMPH

(her fingers in her ears) And words. They are not in my dictionary.

BLOOM

You understood them?

THE YEWS

Ssh!

THE NYMPH

3280

(covers her face with her hands) What have I not seen in that
chamber?
What must my eyes look down on?

BLOOM

(apologetically) I know. Soiled personal linen, wrong side up
with care.
The quoits are loose. From Gibraltar by long sea long ago.

THE NYMPH

(bends her head) Worse, worse!

BLOOM

(reflects precautiously) That antiquated commode. It wasn't her
weight.
She scaled just eleven stone nine. She put on nine pounds after weaning.
It

3290

was a crack and want of glue. Eh? And that absurd orangekeyed utensil
which has only one handle.

(The sound of a waterfall is heard in bright cascade.)

THE WATERFALL

Poulaphouca Poulaphouca
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.

THE YEWS

(mingling their boughs) Listen. Whisper. She is right, our sister.
We grew
by Poulaphouca waterfall. We gave shade on languorous summer days.

(murmuring) Who came to Poulaphouca with the High School excursion?
Who left his nutquesting classmates to seek our shade?

BLOOM

(scared) High School of Poula? Mnemo? Not in full possession
of
faculties. Concussion. Run over by tram.

THE ECHO

Sham!

3310

BLOOM

(pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in nondescript juvenile
grey
and black striped suit, too small for him, white tennis shoes, bordered
stockings with turnover tops and a red schoolcap with badge) I was
in my
teens, a growing boy. A little then sufficed, a jolting car, the mingling
odours of the ladies' cloakroom and lavatory, the throng penned tight on
the old Royal stairs (for they love crushes, instinct of the herd, and
the dark
sexsmelling theatre unbridles vice), even a pricelist of their hosiery.
And
then the heat. There were sunspots that summer. End of school. And
tipsycake. Halcyon days.

all the bells in Montague street. (he cheers feebly) Hurray for
the High
School!

THE ECHO

Fool!

THE YEWS

(rustling) She is right, our sister. Whisper. (Whispered kisses
are heard in
all the wood. Faces of hamadryads peep out from the boles and among the
leaves and break, blossoming into bloom.) Who profaned our silent shade?

THE NYMPH

(coyly, through parting fingers) There? In the open air?

3340

THE YEWS

(sweeping downward) Sister, yes. And on our virgin sward.

THE WATERFALL

Poulaphouca Poulaphouca
Phoucaphouca Phoucaphouca.

THE NYMPH

(with wide fingers) O, infamy!

BLOOM

I was precocious. Youth. The fauna. I sacrificed to the god of the forest.
The flowers that bloom in the spring. It was pairing time. Capillary

3350

attraction is a natural phenomenon. Lotty Clarke, flaxenhaired, I saw at
her
night toilette through illclosed curtains with poor papa's operaglasses:
The
wanton ate grass wildly. She rolled downhill at Rialto bridge to tempt
me
with her flow of animal spirits. She climbed their crooked tree and I.
A saint
couldn't resist it. The demon possessed me. Besides, who saw?

(Staggering Bob, a whitepolled calf, thrusts a ruminating head with
humid nostrils through the foliage.)

nightmare. Giddy Elijah. Fall from cliff. Sad end of government printer's
clerk.

(Through silversilent summer air the dummy of Bloom, rolled in a
mummy, rolls roteatingly from the Lion's Head cliff into the purple
waiting waters.)

THE DUMMYMUMMY

Bbbbblllllblblblblobschb!

(Far out in the bay between Bailey and Kish lights the Erin's King
sails, sending a broadening plume of coalsmoke from her funnel
towards the land.)

3380

COUNCILLOR NANNETII

(alone on deck, in dark alpaca, yellowkitefaced, his hand in his
waistcoat
opening, declaims) When my country takes her place among the nations
of
the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. I have ...

BLOOM

Done. Prff!

THE NYMPH

(loftily) We immortals, as you saw today, have not such a place
and no hair
there either. We are stonecold and pure. We eat electric light. (she
arches
her body in lascivious crispation, placing her forefinger in her mouth)

3390

Spoke to me. Heard from behind. How then could you ...?

BLOOM

(pawing the heather abjectly) O, I have been a perfect pig. Enemas
too I
have administered. One third of a pint of quassia to which add a
tablespoonful of rocksalt. Up the fundament. With Hamilton Long's
syringe, the ladies' friend.

THE NYMPH

In my presence. The powderpuff. (she blushes and makes a knee)
And the
rest!

BLOOM

3400

(dejected) Yes. Peccavi! I have paid homage on that living altar
where the
back changes name. (with sudden fervour) For why should the dainty
scented jewelled hand, the hand that rules ...?

(her features hardening, gropes in the folds of her habit) Sacrilege!
To
attempt my virtue! (a large moist stain appears on her robe) Sully
my
innocence! You are not fit to touch the garment of a pure woman. (she
clutches again in her robe) Wait. Satan, you'll sing no more lovesongs.
Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. (she draws a poniard and, clad in the
sheathmail of an elected knight of nine, strikes at his loins) Nekum!

BLOOM

(starts up, seizes her hand) Hoy! Nebrakada! Cat o' nine lives!
Fair play,
madam. No pruningknife. The fox and the grapes, is it? What do you lack

3460

with your barbed wire? Crucifix not thick enough? (he clutches her veil)
A
holy abbot you want or Brophy, the lame gardener, or the spoutless statue
of the watercarrier, or good mother Alphonsus, eh Reynard?

THE NYMPH

(with a cry flees from him unveiled, her plaster cast cracking, a
cloud of
stench escaping from the cracks) Poli ...!

BLOOM

(calls after her) As if you didn't get it on the double yourselves.
No jerks
and multiple mucosities all over you. I tried it. Your strength our weakness.
What's our studfee? What will you pay on the nail? You fee mendancers on

(composed, regards her)Passe. Mutton dressed as lamb. Long
in the
tooth and superfluous hair. A raw onion the last thing at night would

3480

benefit your complexion. And take some double chin drill. Your eyes are
as
vapid as the glasseyes of your stuffed fox. They have the dimensions of
your
other features, that's all. I'm not a triple screw propeller.

(turns to the piano) Which of you was playing the dead march
from Saul?

ZOE

Me. Mind your cornflowers. (she darts to the piano and bangs chords
on it
with crossed arms) The cat's ramble through the slag. (she glances
back)
Eh? Who's making love to my sweeties? (she darts back to the table)

Give a thing and take it back
God'll ask you where is that
You'll say you don't know
God'll send you down below.

BLOOM

There is a memory attached to it. I should like to have it.

STEPHEN

To have or not to have that is the question.

ZOE

Here. (she hauls up a reef of her slip, revealing her bare thigh,
and unrolls

3520

the potato from the top of her stocking) Those that hides knows where
to
find.

BELLA

(frowns) Here. This isn't a musical peepshow. And don't you smash
that
piano. Who's paying here?

(She goes to the pianola. Stephen fumbles in his pocket and, taking
out a banknote by its corner, hands it to her.)

STEPHEN

(with exaggerated politeness) This silken purse I made out of
the sow's ear
of the public. Madam, excuse me. If you allow me. (he indicates vaguely

3530

Lynch and Bloom) We are all in the same sweepstake, Kinch and Lynch.Dans ce bordel o tenons nostre tat.

LYNCH

(calls from the hearth) Dedalus! Give her your blessing for me.

STEPHEN

(hands Bella a coin) Gold. She has it.

BELLA

(looks at the money, then at Stephen, then at Zoe, Florry and Kitty)
Do
you want three girls? It's ten shillings here.

STEPHEN

3540

(delightedly) A hundred thousand apologies. (he fumbles again
and takes
out and hands her two crowns) Permit, brevi manu, my sight is
somewhat
troubled.

(Bella goes to the table to count the money while Stephen talks to
himself in monosyllables. Zoe bends over the table. Kitty leans over
Zoe's neck. Lynch gets up, rights his cap and, clasping Kitty's
waist, adds his head to the group.)

(chattering and squabbling) The gentleman... ten shillings....
paying for
the three... allow me a moment... this gentleman pays separate.... who's
touching it?... ow!... mind who you're pinching... are you staying the
night or a short time?... who did?... you're a liar, excuse me... the
gentleman paid down like a gentleman ... drink ... it's long after eleven.

STEPHEN

(at the pianola, making a gesture of abhorrence) No bottles!
What, eleven?
A riddle!

ZOE

3560

(lifting up her pettigown and folding a half sovereign into the top
of her
stocking) Hard earned on the flat of my back.

LYNCH

(lifting Kitty from the table) Come!

KITTY

Wait. (she clutches the two crowns)

FLORRY

And me?

LYNCH

3570

Hoopla!

(He lifts her, carries her and bumps her down on the sofa.)

STEPHEN

The fox crew, the cocks flew,
The bells in heaven
Were striking eleven.
'Tis time for her poor soul
To get out of heaven.

BLOOM

(quietly lays a half sovereign on the table between Bella and Florry)
So.

3580

Allow me. (he takes up the poundnote) Three times ten. We're square.

BELLA

(admiringly) You're such a slyboots, old cocky. I could kiss
you.

ZOE

(points) Him? Deep as a drawwell.

(Lynch bends Kitty back over the sofa and kisses her. Bloom goes
with the poundnote to Stephen.)

BLOOM

This is yours.

3590

STEPHEN

How is that? The distrait or absentminded beggar. (He fumbles again
in
his pocket and draws out a handful of coins. An object falls.) That
fell.

BLOOM

(stooping, picks up and hands a box of matches) This.

STEPHEN

Lucifer. Thanks.

BLOOM

(quietly) You had better hand over that cash to me to take care
of. Why
pay more?

3600

STEPHEN

(hands him all his coins) Be just before you are generous.

BLOOM

I will but is it wise? (he counts) One, seven, eleven, and five.
Six. Eleven. I
don't answer for what you may have lost.

(comes to the table) Cigarette, please. (Lynch tosses a cigarette
from the
sofa to the table)

And so Georgina Johnson is dead and married. (A
cigarette appears on the table. Stephen looks at it) Wonder. Parlour
magic. Married. Hm. (he strikes a match and proceeds to light the cigarette

3620

with enigmatic melancholy)

LYNCH

(watching him) You would have a better chance of lighting it
if you held
the match nearer.

STEPHEN

(brings the match near his eye) Lynx eye. Must get glasses. Broke
them
yesterday. Sixteen years ago. Distance. The eye sees all flat. (He draws
the
match away. It goes out.) Brain thinks. Near: far. Ineluctable modality
of
the visible. (he frowns mysteriously) Hm. Sphinx. The beast that
has two
backs at midnight. Married.

3630

ZOE

It was a commercial traveller married her and took her away with him.

FLORRY

(nods) Mr Lambe from London.

STEPHEN

Lamb of London, who takest away the sins of our world.

LYNCH

(embracing Kitty on the sofa, chants deeply) Dona nobis pacem.

(The cigarette slips from Stephen 's fingers. Bloom picks it up and
throws it in the grate.)

3640

BLOOM

Don't smoke. You ought to eat. Cursed dog I met. (to Zoe) You
have
nothing?

ZOE

Is he hungry?

STEPHEN

(extends his hand to her smiling and chants to the air of the bloodoath
in(The Dusk of the Gods)

(points to his hand) That weal there is an accident. Fell and
cut it
twentytwo years ago. I was sixteen.

ZOE

I see, says the blind man. Tell us news.

STEPHEN

See? Moves to one great goal. I am twentytwo. Sixteen years ago he was
twentytwo too. Sixteen years ago I twentytwo tumbled. Twentytwo years
ago he sixteen fell off his hobbyhorse. (he winces) Hurt my hand
somewhere. Must see a dentist. Money?

(Zoe whispers to Florry. They giggle. Bloom releases his hand and

3720

writes idly on the table in backhand, pencilling slow curves.)

FLORRY

What?

(A hackneycar, number three hundred and twentyfour, with a
gallantbuttocked mare, driven by James Barton, Harmony avenue,
Donnybrook, trots past. Blazes Boylan and Lenehan sprawl
swaying on the sideseats. The Ormond boots crouches behind on
the axle. Sadly over the crossblind Lydia Douce and Mina Kennedy
gaze.)

THE BOOTS

3730

(jogging, mocks them with thumb and wriggling wormfingers) Haw
haw
have you the horn?

(Bronze by gold they whisper.)

ZOE

(to Florry) Whisper. (she whispers again)

(Over the well of the car Blazes Boylan leans, his boater straw set
sideways, a red flower in his mouth. Lenehan in yachtsman's cap
and white shoes officiously detaches a long hair from Blazes
Boylan's coat shoulder.)

LENEHAN

3740

Ho! What do I here behold? Were you brushing the cobwebs off a few
quims?

BOYLAN

(sated, smiles) Plucking a turkey.

LENEHAN

A good night's work.

BOYLAN

(holding up four thick bluntungulated fingers, winks) Blazes
Kate! Up to
sample or your money back. (he holds out a forefinger) Smell that.

LENEHAN

3750

(smells gleefully) Ah! Lobster and mayonnaise. Ah!

ZOE AND FLORRY

(laugh together) Ha ha ha ha.

BOYLAN

(jumps surely from the car and calls loudly for all to hear)
Hello, Bloom!
Mrs Bloom dressed yet?

(tosses him sixpence) Here, to buy yourself a gin and splash.
(he hangs his
hat smartly on a peg of Bloom 's antlered head) Show me in. I have
a little
private business with your wife, you understand?

BLOOM

Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Madam Tweedy is in her bath, sir.

MARION

He ought to feel himself highly honoured. (she plops splashing out
of the
water) Raoul darling, come and dry me. I'm in my pelt. Only my new
hat
and a carriage sponge.

BOYLAN

3770

(a merry twinkle in his eye) Topping!

BELLA

What? What is it?

(Zoe whispers to her.)

MARION

Let him look, the pishogue! Pimp! And scourge himself! I'll write to
a
powerful prostitute or Bartholomona, the bearded woman, to raise weals
out on him an inch thick and make him bring me back a signed and
stamped receipt.

Lapses are condoned. Even the great Napoleon when measurements were
taken next the skin after his death ...

(Mrs Dignam, widow woman, her snubnose and cheeks flushed
with deathtalk, tears and Tunney's tawny sherry, hurries by in her
weeds, her bonnet awry, rouging and powdering her cheeks, lips
and nose, a pen chivvying her brood of cygnets. Beneath her skirt

3840

appear her late husband's everyday trousers and turnedup boots,
large eights. She holds a Scottish Widows' insurance policy and a
large marquee umbrella under which her brood run with her, Patsy
hopping on one shod foot, his collar loose, a hank of porksteaks
dangling, Freddy whimpering, Susy with a crying cod's mouth,
Alice struggling with the baby. She cuffs them on, her streamers
flaunting aloft.)

FREDDY

Ah, ma, you're dragging me along!

3850

SUSY

Mamma, the beeftea is fizzing over!

SHAKESPEARE

(with paralytic rage) Weda seca whokilla farst.

(The face of Martin Cunningham, bearded, refeatures
Shakespeare's beardless face. The marquee umbrella sways
drunkenly, the children run aside. Under the umbrella appears Mrs
Cunningham in merry widow hat and kimono gown. She glides
sidling and bowing, twirling japanesily.)

MRS CUNNINGHAM

3860

(sings)

And they call me the jewel of Asia!

MARTIN CUNNINGHAM

(gazes on her, impassive) Immense! Most bloody awful demirep!

STEPHEN

Et exaltabuntur cornua iusti. Queens lay with prize bulls. Remember
Pasiphae for whose lust my grandoldgrossfather made the first
confessionbox. Forget not Madam Grissel Steevens nor the suine scions of
the house of Lambert. And Noah was drunk with wine. And his ark was
open.

3870

BELLA

None of that here. Come to the wrong shop.

LYNCH

Let him alone. He's back from Paris.

ZOE

(runs to Stephen and links him) O go on! Give us some parleyvoo.

(Stephen claps hat on head and leaps over to the fireplace where
he
stands with shrugged shoulders, finny hands outspread, a painted
smile on his face.)

LYNCH

3880

(pommelling on the sofa) Rmm Rmm Rmm Rrrrrrmmmm.

STEPHEN

(gabbles with marionette jerks) Thousand places of entertainment
to
expense your evenings with lovely ladies saling gloves and other things
perhaps hers heart beerchops perfect fashionable house very eccentric
where lots cocottes beautiful dressed much about princesses like are
dancing cancan and walking there parisian clowneries extra foolish for
bachelors foreigns the same if talking a poor english how much smart they
are on things love and sensations voluptuous. Misters very selects for
is
pleasure must to visit heaven and hell show with mortuary candles and they

3890

tears silver which occur every night. Perfectly shocking terrific of religion's
things mockery seen in universal world. All chic womans which arrive full
of modesty then disrobe and squeal loud to see vampire man debauch nun
very fresh young with dessous troublants. (he clacks his tongue loudly)
Ho,
la la! Ce pif qu'il a!

LYNCH

Vive le vampire!

THE WHORES

Bravo! Parleyvoo!

STEPHEN

3900

(with head back, laughs loudly, clapping himself grimacing) Great
success
of laughing. Angels much prostitutes like and holy apostles big damn
ruffians. Demimondaines nicely handsome sparkling of diamonds very
amiable costumed. Or do you are fond better what belongs they moderns
pleasure turpitude of old mans? (he points about him with grotesque
gestures which Lynch and the whores reply to) Caoutchouc statue woman
reversible or lifesize tompeeptom of virgins nudities very lesbic the kiss
five
ten times. Enter, gentleman, to see in mirror every positions trapezes
all that
machine there besides also if desire act awfully bestial butcher's boy
pollutes in warm veal liver or omlet on the belly piece de Shakespeare.

3910

BELLA

(clapping her belly sinks back on the sofa, with a shout of laughter)
An
omelette on the.... Ho! ho! ho! ho!... omelette on the....

(The fronds and spaces of the wallpaper file rapidly crosscountry.
A stout fox, drawn from covert, brush pointed, having buried his
grandmother, runs swift for the open, brighteyed, seeking badger
earth, under the leaves. The pack of staghounds follows, nose to the
ground, sniffing their quarry, beaglebaying, burblbrbling to be
blooded. Ward Union huntsmen and huntswomen live with them,
hot for a kill. From Six Mile Point, Flathouse, Nine Mile Stone
follow the footpeople with knotty sticks, hayforks, salmongaffs,

(A dark horse, riderless, bolts like a phantom past the winningpost,
his mane moonfoaming, his eyeballs stars. The field follows, a
bunch of bucking mounts. Skeleton horses, Sceptre, Maximum the
Second, Zinfandel, the duke of Westminster's Shotover, Repulse,
the duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris. Dwarfs ride them,

3980

rustyarmoured, leaping, leaping in their, in their saddles. Last in a
drizzle of rain on a brokenwinded isabelle nag, Cock of the North,
the favourite, honey cap, green jacket, orange sleeves, Garrett Deasy
up, gripping the reins, a hockeystick at the ready. His nag on
spavined whitegaitered feet jogs along the rocky road.)

THE ORANGE LODGES

(jeering) Get down and push, mister. Last lap! You'll be home
the night!

GARRETT DEASY

(bolt upright, his nailscraped face plastered with postagestamps,
brandishes
his hockeystick, his blue eyes flashing in the prism of the chandelier
as his

3990

mount lopes by at schooling gallop) Per vias rectas!

(A yoke of buckets leopards all over him and his rearing nag a
torrent of mutton broth with dancing coins of carrots, barley,
onions, turnips, potatoes.)

(The pianola with changing lights plays in waltz time the prelude
of My Girl's a Yorkshire Girl. Stephen throws his ashplant on the
table and seizes Zoe round the waist. Florry and Bella push the
table towards the fireplace. Stephen, arming Zoe with exaggerated

4030

grace, begins to waltz her round the room. Bloom stands aside. Her
sleeve filling from gracing arms reveals a white fleshflower of
vaccination.

Between the curtains Professor Maginni inserts a leg
on the toepoint of which spins a silk hat. With a deft kick he sends it
spinning to his crown and jauntyhatted skates in. He wears a slate
frockcoat with claret silk lapels, a gorget of cream tulle, a green
lowcut waistcoat, stock collar with white kerchief, tight lavender
trousers, patent pumps and canary gloves. In his buttonhole is an
immense dahlia. He twirls in reversed directions a clouded cane,
then wedges it tight in his oxter. He places a hand lightly on his

(The morning and noon hours waltz in their places, turning,
advancing to each other, shaping their curves, bowing visavis.
Cavaliers behind them arch and suspend their arms, with hands
descending to, touching, rising from their shoulders.)

(Zoe and Stephen turn boldly with looser swing. The twilight hours
advance from long landshadows, dispersed, lagging, languideyed,
their cheeks delicate with cipria and false faint bloom. They are in
grey gauze with dark bat sleeves that flutter in the landbreeze.)

(The night hours, one by one, steal to the last place. Morning, noon
and twilight hours retreat before them. They are masked, with
daggered hair and bracelets of dull bells. Weary they curchycurchy
under veils.)

(Stephen's mother, emaciated, rises stark through the floor, in leper
grey with a wreath of faded orangeblossoms and a torn bridal veil,
her face worn and noseless, green with gravemould. Her hair is
scant and lank. She fixes her bluecircled hollow eyesockets on
Stephen and opens her toothless mouth uttering a silent word. A

4160

choir of virgins and confessors sing voicelessly.)

THE CHOIR

Liliata rutilantium te confessorum
Iubilantium te virginum

(From the top of a tower Buck Mulligan, in particoloured jester's
dress of puce and yellow and clown's cap with curling bell, stands
gaping at her, a smoking buttered split scone in his hand.)

(with the subtle smile of death's madness) I was once the beautiful
May
Goulding. I am dead.

STEPHEN

(horrorstruck) Lemur, who are you? No. What bogeyman's trick
is this?

BUCK MULLIGAN

(shakes his curling capbell) The mockery of it! Kinch dogsbody
killed her
bitchbody. She kicked the bucket. (tears of molten butter fall from
his eyes
on to the scone) Our great sweet mother! Epi oinopa ponton

THE MOTHER

4180

(comes nearer, breathing upon him softly her breath of wetted ashes)
All
must go through it, Stephen. More women than men in the world. You too.
Time will come.

STEPHEN

(choking with fright, remorse and horror) They say I killed you,
mother.
He offended your memory. Cancer did it, not I. Destiny.

THE MOTHER

(a green rill of bile trickling from a side of her mouth) You
sang that song
to me. Love's bitter mystery.

STEPHEN

4190

(eagerly) Tell me the word, mother, if you know now. The word
known to
all men.

THE MOTHER

Who saved you the night you jumped into the train at Dalkey with Paddy
Lee? Who had pity for you when you were sad among the strangers?
Prayer is allpowerful. Prayer for the suffering souls in the Ursuline manual
and forty days' indulgence. Repent, Stephen.

STEPHEN

The ghoul! Hyena!

THE MOTHER

4200

I pray for you in my other world. Get Dilly to make you that boiled
rice
every night after your brainwork. Years and years I loved you, O, my son,
my firstborn, when you lay in my womb.

ZOE

(fanning herself with the gratefan) I'm melting!

FLORRY

(points to Stephen) Look! He's white.

BLOOM

(goes to the window to open it more) Giddy.

THE MOTHER

4210

(with smouldering eyes) Repent! O, the fire of hell!

STEPHEN

(panting) His noncorrosive sublimate! The corpsechewer! Raw head
and
bloody bones.

(loudly) Here, none of your tall talk. This isn't a brothel.
A tenshilling

4280

house.

BLOOM

(His head under the lamp, pulls the chain. Puling, the gasjet lights
up a
crushed mauve purple shade. He raises the ashplant.) Only the chimney's
broken. Here is all he ....

BELLA

(shrinks back and screams) Jesus! Don't!

BLOOM

(warding off a blow) To show you how he hit the paper. There's
not
sixpenceworth of damage done. Ten shillings!

4290

FLORRY

(with a glass of water, enters) Where is he?

BELLA

Do you want me to call the police?

BLOOM

O, I know. Bulldog on the premises. But he's a Trinity student. Patrons
of
your establishment. Gentlemen that pay the rent. (he makes a masonic
sign) Know what I mean? Nephew of the vicechancellor. You don't want
a
scandal.

What? Where? (he throws a shilling on the table and starts) That's
for the
chimney. Where? I need mountain air.

(He hurries out through the hall. The whores point. Florry follows,
spilling water from her tilted tumbler. On the doorstep all the
whores clustered talk volubly, pointing to the right where the fog
has cleared off From the left arrives a jingling hackney car. It slows
to in front of the house. Bloom at the halldoor perceives Corny
Kelleher who is about to dismount from the car with two silent
lechers. He averts his face. Bella from within the hall urges on her
whores. They blow ickylickysticky yumyum kisses. Corny Kelleher

4320

replies with a ghastly lewd smile. The silent lechers turn to pay the
jarvey. Zoe and Kitty still point right.

Bloom, parting them swiftly,
draws his caliph's hood and poncho and hurries down the steps
with sideways face. Incog Haroun Al Raschid he flits behind the
silent lechers and hastens on by the railings with fleet step of a pard
strewing the drag behind him, torn envelopes drenched in aniseed.
The ashplant marks his stride. A pack of bloodhounds, led by
Hornblower of Trinity brandishing a dogwhip in tallyho cap and
an old pair of grey trousers, follow from fir, picking up the scent,
nearer, baying, panting, at fault, breaking away, throwing their

(At the corner of Beaver street beneath the scaffolding Bloom
panting stops on the fringe of the noisy quarrelling knot, a lot not
knowing a jot what hi! hi! row and wrangle round the whowhat
brawlaltogether.)

STEPHEN

(with elaborate gestures, breathing deeply and slowly) You are
my guests.
Uninvited. By virtue of the fifth of George and seventh of Edward. History

4370

to blame. Fabled by mothers of memory.

PRIVATE CARR

(to Cissy Caffrey) Was he insulting you?

STEPHEN

Addressed her in vocative feminine. Probably neuter. Ungenitive.

VOICES

No, he didn't. I seen him. The girl there. He was in Mrs Cohen's. What's
up? Soldier and civilian.

CISSY CAFFREY

I was in company with the soldiers and they left me to do, you know,
and

4380

the young man run up behind me. But I'm faithful to the man that's treating
me though I'm only a shilling whore.

VOICES

Shesfaithfultheman.

STEPHEN

(catches sight of Lynch's and Kitty's heads) Hail, Sisyphus.
(he points to
himself and the others) Poetic. Uropoetic.

(his cap awry, advances to Stephen) Say, how would it be, governor,
if I
was to bash in your jaw?

4410

STEPHEN

(looks up to the sky) How? Very unpleasant. Noble art of selfpretence.
Personally, I detest action. (he waves his hand) Hand hurts me slightly.Enfin ce sont vos oignons. (to Cissy Caffrey) Some trouble is on
here.
What is it precisely?

DOLLY GRAY

(from her balcony waves her handkerchief, giving the sign of the
heroine of
Jericho) Rahab. Cook's son, goodbye. Safe home to Dolly. Dream of the
girl you left behind and she will dream of you.

(turns) Eh? (he disengages himself) Why should I not speak
to him or to
any human being who walks upright upon this oblate orange? (he points
his finger) I'm not afraid of what I can talk to if I see his eye.
Retaining the
perpendicular. (he staggers a pace back)

BLOOM

(propping him) Retain your own.

4430

STEPHEN

(laughs emptily) My centre of gravity is displaced. I have forgotten
the
trick. Let us sit down somewhere and discuss. Struggle for life is the
law of
existence but but human philirenists, notably the tsar and the king of
England, have invented arbitration. (he taps his brow) But in here
it is I
must kill the priest and the king.

BIDDY THE CLAP

Did you hear what the professor said? He's a professor out of the college.

CUNTY KATE

I did. I heard that.

4440

BIDDY THE CLAP

He expresses himself with such marked refinement of phraseology.

CUNTY KATE

Indeed, yes. And at the same time with such apposite trenchancy.

PRIVATE CARR

(pulls himself free and comes forward) What's that you're saying
about
my king?

(Edward the Seventh appears in an archway. He wars a white
jersey on which an image of the Sacred Heart is stitched with the
insignia of Garter and Thistle, Golden Fleece, Elephant of

4450

Denmark, Skinner's and Probyn's horse, Lincoln 's Inn bencher
and ancient and honourable artillery company of Massachusetts.
He sucks a red jujube. He is robed as a grand elect perfect and
sublime mason with trowel and apron, marked made in Germany.
In his left hand he holds a plasterer's bucket on which is printed
Defense d'uriner. A roar of welcome greets him.)

EDWARD THE SEVENTH

(slowly, solemnly but indistinctly) Peace, perfect peace. For
identification,
bucket in my hand. Cheerio, boys. (he turns to his subjects) We
have come
here to witness a clean straight fight and we heartily wish both men the
best

(nervous, friendly, pulls himself up) I understand your point
of view
though I have no king myself for the moment. This is the age of patent
medicines. A discussion is difficult down here. But this is the point.
You die

4470

for your country. Suppose. (he places his arm on Private Carr's sleeve)
Not that I wish it for you. But I say: Let my country die for me. Up to
the
present it has done so. I didn't want it to die. Damn death. Long live
life!

EDWARD THE SEVENTH

(levitates over heaps of slain, in the garb and with the halo of
Joking Jesus,
a white jujube in his phosphorescent face)

My methods are new and are causing surprise.
To make the blind see I throw dust in their eyes.

STEPHEN

Kings and unicorns! (he fills back a pace) Come somewhere and
we'll...

4480

What was that girl saying ...?

PRIVATE COMPTON

Eh, Harry, give him a kick in the knackers. Stick one into Jerry.

BLOOM

(to the privates, softly) He doesn't know what he's saying. Taken
a little
more than is good for him. Absinthe. Greeneyed monster. I know him.
He's a gentleman, a poet. It's all right.

(in medieval hauberk, two wild geese volant on his helm, with noble
indignation points a mailed hand against the privates) Werf those eykes
to
footboden, big grand porcos of johnyellows todos covered of gravy!

BLOOM

(to Stephen) Come home. You'll get into trouble.

STEPHEN

4510

(swaying) I don't avoid it. He provokes my intelligence.

BIDDY THE CLAP

One immediately observes that he is of patrician lineage.

THE VIRAGO

Green above the red, says he. Wolfe Tone.

THE BAWD

The red's as good as the green. And better. Up the soldiers! Up King
Edward!

A ROUGH

(laughs) Ay! Hands up to De Wet.

4520

THE CITIZEN

(with a huge emerald muffler and shillelagh, calls)

May the God above
Send down a dove
With teeth as sharp as razors
To slit the throats
Of the English dogs
That hanged our Irish leaders.

THE CROPPY BOY

(the ropenoose round his neck, gripes in his issuing bowels with
both

4530

hands)

I bear no hate to a living thing,
But I love my country beyond the king.

RUMBOLD, DEMON BARBER

(accompanied by two blackmasked assistants, advances with gladstone
bag
which he opens) Ladies and gents, cleaver purchased by Mrs Pearcy to
slay
Mogg. Knife with which Voisin dismembered the wife of a compatriot and
hid remains in a sheet in the cellar, the unfortunate female's throat being
cut from ear to ear. Phial containing arsenic retrieved from body of Miss
Barron which sent Seddon to the gallows.

4540

(He jerks the rope. The assistants leap at the victim's legs and
drag
him downward, grunting The croppy boy's tongue protrudes
violently.)

THE CROPPY BOY

Horhot ho hray hor hother's hest.

(He gives up the ghost. A violent erection of the hanged sends gouts
of sperm spouting through his deathclothes on to the cobblestones.
Mrs Bellingham, Mrs Yelverton Barry and the Honourable Mrs
Mervyn Talboys rush forward with their handkerchiefs to sop it
up.)

4550

RUMBOLD

I'm near it myself. (he undoes the noose) Rope which hanged the
awful
rebel. Ten shillings a time. As applied to Her Royal Highness. (he plunges
his head into the gaping belly of the hanged and draws out his head again
clotted with coiled and smoking entrails) My painful duty has now been
done. God save the king!

(throws up his hands) O, this is too monotonous! Nothing. He
wants my
money and my life, though want must be his master, for some brutish
empire of his. Money I haven't. (he searches his pockets vaguely)
Gave it
to someone.

PRIVATE CARR

4570

Who wants your bleeding money?

STEPHEN

(tries to move off) Will someone tell me where I am least likely
to meet
these necessary evils? Ca se voit aussi a Paris. Not that I ...
But, by saint
Patrick ....!

(The women's heads coalesce. Old Gummy Granny in sugarloaf
hat appears seated on a toadstool, the deathflower of the potato
blight on her breast.)

STEPHEN

4580

Aha! I know you, gammer! Hamlet, revenge! The old sow that eats her
farrow!

OLD GUMMY GRANNY

(rocking to and fro) Ireland's sweetheart, the king of Spain's
daughter,
alanna. Strangers in my house, bad manners to them! (she keens with
banshee woe) Ochone! Ochone! Silk of the kine! (she wails) You
met with
poor old Ireland and how does she stand?

STEPHEN

How do I stand you? The hat trick! Where's the third person of the Blessed
Trinity? Soggarth Aroon? The reverend Carrion Crow.

4590

CISSY CAFFREY

(shrill) Stop them from fighting!

A ROUGH

Our men retreated.

PRIVATE CARR

(tugging at his belt) I'll wring the neck of any fucker says
a word against
my fucking king.

BLOOM

(terrified) He said nothing. Not a word. A pure misunderstanding.

PRIVATE COMPTON

4600

Go it, Harry. Do him one in the eye. He's a proBoer.

STEPHEN

Did I? When?

BLOOM

(to the redcoats) We fought for you in South Africa, Irish missile
troops.
Isn't that history? Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Honoured by our monarch.

bearskin cap with hackleplume and accoutrements, with epaulettes,
gilt chevrons and sabretaches, his breast bright with medals, toes
the line. He gives the pilgrim warrior's sign of the knights
templars.)

and appear to many. A chasm opens with a noiseless yawn. Tom
Rochford, winner, in athlete's singlet and breeches, arrives at the
head of the national hurdle handicap and leaps into the void. He is
followed by a race of runners and leapers. In wild attitudes they
spring from the brink. Their bodies plunge. Factory lasses with
fancy clothes toss redhot Yorkshire baraabombs. Society ladies lift
their skirts above their heads to protect themselves. Laughing
witches in red cutty sarks ride through the air on broomsticks.
Quakerlyster plasters blisters. It rains dragons' teeth. Armed heroes

spring up from furrows. They exchange in amity the pass of knights

4680

of the red cross and fight duels with cavalry sabres: Wolfe Tone
against Henry Grattan, Smith O'Brien against Daniel O'Connell,
Michael Davitt against Isaac Butt, Justin M'Carthy against Parnell,
Arthur Griffith against John Redmond, John O'Leary against Lear
O'Johnny, Lord Edward Fitzgerald against Lord Gerald
Fitzedward, The O'Donoghue of The Glens against The Glens of
The O'Donoghue. On an eminence, the centre of the earth, rises the
feldaltar of Saint Barbara. Black candles rise from its gospel and
epistle horns. From the high barbacans of the tower two shafts of
light fall on the smokepalled altarstone. On the altarstone Mrs Mina

4690

Purefoy, goddess of unreason, lies, naked, fettered, a chalice resting
on her swollen belly. Father Malachi O'Flynn in a lace petticoat
and reversed chasuble, his two left feet back to the front, celebrates
camp mass. The Reverend Mr Hugh C Haines Love M. A. in a
plain cassock and mortarboard, his head and collar back to the
front, holds over the celebrant's head an open umbrella.)

FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN

Introibo ad altare diaboli.

THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE

To the devil which hath made glad my young days.

4700

FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN

(takes from the chalice and elevates a blooddripping host) Corpus
meum.

THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE

(raises high behind the celebrant's petticoat, revealing his grey
bare hairy
buttocks between which a carrot is stuck) My body.

(with ferocious articulation) I'll do him in, so help me fucking
Christ! I'll

4720

wring the bastard fucker's bleeding blasted fucking windpipe!

(The retriever, nosing on the fringe of the crowd, barks noisily.)

BLOOM

(runs to Lynch) Can't you get him away?

LYNCH

He likes dialectic, the universal language. Kitty! (to Bloom)
Get him away,
you. He won't listen to me.

(He drags Kitty away.)

STEPHEN

(points) Exit Judas. Et laqueo se suspendit.

4730

BLOOM

(runs to Stephen) Come along with me now before worse happens.
Here's
your stick.

STEPHEN

Stick, no. Reason. This feast of pure reason.

OLD GUMMY GRANNY

(thrusts a dagger towards Stephen's hand) Remove him, acushla.
At
8.35 a.m. you will be in heaven and Ireland will be free. (she prays)
O
good God, take him!

CISSY CAFFREY

4740

(pulling Private Carr) Come on, you're boosed. He insulted me
but I
forgive him. (shouting in his ear) I forgive him for insulting me.

BLOOM

(over Stephen's shoulder) Yes, go. You see he's incapable.

PRIVATE CARR

(breaks loose) I'll insult him.

(He rushes towards Stephen, fist outstretched, and strikes him in
the face. Stephen totters, collapses, falls, stunned. He lies prone, his
face to the sky, his hat rolling to the wall Bloom follows and picks it
up.)

What call had the redcoat to strike the gentleman and he under the
influence. Let them go and fight the Boers!

4760

THE BAWD

Listen to who's talking! Hasn't the soldier a right to go with his girl?
He
gave him the coward's blow.

(They grab at each other's hair, claw at each other and spit)

THE RETRIEVER

(barking) Wow wow wow.

BLOOM

(shoves them back, loudly) Get back, stand back!

PRIVATE COMPTON

(tugging his comrade) Here. Bugger off, Harry. Here's the cops!

4770

(Two raincaped watch, tall, stand in the group.)

FIRST WATCH

What's wrong here?

PRIVATE COMPTON

We were with this lady. And he insulted us. And assaulted my chum. (the
retriever barks) Who owns the bleeding tyke?

CISSY CAFFREY

(with expectation) Is he bleeding!

A MAN

(rising from his knees) No. Gone off. He'll come to all right.

4780

BLOOM

(glances sharply at the man) Leave him to me. I can easily .....

SECOND WATCH

Who are you? Do you know him?

PRIVATE CARR

(lurches towards the watch) He insulted my lady friend.

BLOOM

(angrily) You hit him without provocation. I'm a witness. Constable,
take
his regimental number.

SECOND WATCH

4790

I don't want your instructions in the discharge of my duty.

PRIVATE COMPTON

(pulling his comrade) Here, bugger off Harry. Or Bennett'll shove
you in
the lockup.

PRIVATE CARR

(staggering as he is pulled away) God fuck old Bennett. He's
a whitearsed
bugger. I don't give a shit for him.

FIRST WATCH

(takes out his notebook) What's his name?

BLOOM

4800

(peering over the crowd) I just see a car there. If you give
me a hand a
second, sergeant....

FIRST WATCH

Name and address.

(Corny Kelleker, weepers round his hat, a death wreath in his hand,
appears among the bystanders.)

BLOOM

(quickly) O, the very man! (he whispers) Simon Dedalus'
son. A bit
sprung. Get those policemen to move those loafers back.

SECOND WATCH

4810

Night, Mr Kelleher.

CORNY KELLEHER

(to the watch, with drawling eye) That's all right. I know him.
Won a bit
on the races. Gold cup. Throwaway. (he laughs) Twenty to
one. Do you
follow me?

FIRST WATCH

(turns to the crowd) Here, what are you all gaping at? Move on
out of
that.

(The crowd disperses slowly, muttering, down the lane.)

CORNY KELLEHER

4820

Leave it to me, sergeant. That'll be all right. (he laughs, shaking
his head)
We were often as bad ourselves, ay or worse. What? Eh, what?

FIRST WATCH

(laughs) I suppose so.

CORNY KELLEHER

(nudges the second watch) Come and wipe your name off the slate.
(he
lilts, wagging his head) With my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom
tooraloom. What, eh, do you follow me?

SECOND WATCH

(genially) Ah, sure we were too.

4830

CORNY KELLEHER

(winking) Boys will be boys. I've a car round there.

SECOND WATCH

All right, Mr Kelleher. Good night.

CORNY KELLEHER

I'll see to that.

BLOOM

(shakes hands with both of the watch in turn) Thank you very
much,
gentlemen. Thank you. (he mumbles confidentially) We don't want
any
scandal, you understand. Father is a wellknown highly respected citizen.

4840

Just a little wild oats, you understand.

FIRST WATCH

O. I understand, sir.

SECOND WATCH

That's all right, sir.

FIRST WATCH

It was only in case of corporal injuries I'd have to report it at the
station.

BLOOM

(nods rapidly) Naturally. Quite right. Only your bounden duty.

SECOND WATCH

4850

It's our duty.

CORNY KELLEHER

Good night, men.

THE WATCH

(saluting together) Night, gentlemen.

(They move off with slow heavy tread)

BLOOM

(blows) Providential you came on the scene. You have a car...?

CORNY KELLEHER

(laughs, pointing his thumb over his right shoulder to the car brought
up

4860

against the scaffolding) Two commercials that were standing fizz in
Jammet's. Like princes, faith. One of them lost two quid on the race.
Drowning his grief. And were on for a go with the jolly girls. So I landed
them up on Behan's car and down to nighttown.

BLOOM

I was just going home by Gardiner street when I happened to ...

CORNY KELLEHER

(laughs) Sure they wanted me to join in with the mots. No, by
God, says I.
Not for old stagers like myself and yourself. (he laughs again and leers
with lacklustre eye) Thanks be to God we have it in the house, what,
eh, do

4870

you follow me? Hah, hah, hah!

BLOOM

(tries to laugh) He, he, he! Yes. Matter of fact I was just visiting
an old
friend of mine there, Virag, you don't know him (poor fellow, he's laid
up
for the past week) and we had a liquor together and I was just making
my
way home ......

(The horse neighs.)

THE HORSE

Hohohohohohoh! Hohohohome!

CORNY KELLEHER

4880

Sure it was Behan our jarvey there that told me after we left the two
commercials in Mrs Cohen's and I told him to pull up and got off to see.
(he laughs) Sober hearsedrivers a speciality. Will I give him a
lift home?
Where does he hang out? Somewhere in Cabra, what?

(Corny Kelleher returns to the outside car and mounts it. The
horseharness jingles.)

CORNY KELLEHER

(from the car, standing) Night.

BLOOM

Night.

(The jarvey chucks the reins and raises his whip encouragingly.
The car and horse back slowly, awkwardly, and turn. Corny
Kelleher on the sideseat sways his head to and fro in sign of mirth at

4910

Bloom's plight. The jarvey joins in the mute pantomimic merriment
nodding from the farther seat. Bloom shakes his head in mute
mirthful reply. With thumb and palm Corny Kelleher reassures that
the two bobbies will allow the sleep to continue for what else is to be
done. With a slow nod Bloom conveys his gratitude as that is
exactly what Stephen needs. The car jingles tooraloom round the
corner of the tooraloom lane. Corny Kelleher again reassuralooms
with his hand. Bloom with his hand assuralooms Corny Kelleher
that he is reassuraloomtay. The tinkling hoofs and jingling harness
grow fainter with their tooralooloo looloo lay. Bloom, holding in

4920

his hand Stephen's hat, festooned with shavings, and ashplant,
stands irresolute. Then he bends to him and shakes him by the
shoulder.)

BLOOM

Eh! Ho! (There is no answer. He bends again.) Mr Dedalus! (there
is no
answer) The name if you call. Somnambulist. (he bends again and
hesitating, brings his mouth near the face of the prostrate form) Stephen!
(There is no answer. He calls again.) Stephen!

(he bends again and undoes the buttons
of
Stephen's waistcoat) To breathe. (he brushes the woodshavings from
Stephen's clothes with light hand and fingers) One pound seven. Not
hurt
anyhow. (he listens) What?

STEPHEN

4940

(murmurs)

.... shadows ... the woods
... white breast... dim sea.

(He stretches out his arms, sighs again and curls his body. Bloom,
holding the hat and ashplant, stands erect. A dog barks in the
distance. Bloom tightens and loosens his grip on the ashplant. He
looks down on Stephen's face and form.)

BLOOM

(communes with the night) Face reminds me of his poor mother.
In the
shady wood. The deep white breast. Ferguson, I think I caught. A girl.

4950

Some girl. Best thing could happen him. (he murmurs) ..swear that
I will
always hail, ever conceal, never reveal, any part or parts, art or arts
..(he
murmurs) ..in the rough sands of the sea ..a cabletow's length from
the
shore.... where the tide ebbs.... and flows .....

(Silent, thoughtful, alert he stands on guard, his fingers at his
lips in
the attitude of secret master. Against the dark wall a figure appears
slowly, a fairy boy of eleven, a changeling, kidnapped, dressed in an
Eton suit with glass shoes and a little bronze helmet, holding a book
in his hand. He reads from right to left inaudibly, smiling, kissing
the page.)

4960

BLOOM

(wonderstruck, calls inaudibly) Rudy!

RUDY

(gazes, unseeing, into Bloom's eyes and goes on reading, kissing,
smiling
He has a delicate mauve face. On his suit he has diamond and ruby
buttons. In his free left hand he holds a slim ivory cane with a violet
bowknot. A white lambkin peeps out of his waistcoat pocket.)